I'll Be Back In Time
by EmmettMcFly55
Summary: After the trilogy, Doc Brown is having difficulty combining his life in the past with the desire to see Marty again. But when he ends up in an alternate reality, there is only one man who can help him get back home...
1. Prologue

******Disclaimer: I don't own Back to the Future. It's a fact, look it up! **

_Author's Note: Well, happy new year (late, I know) to everyone and welcome to my sort-of 'Back to the Future IV'. Or at least, it is a BTTF IV in that it is a direct sequel to the Trilogy and details with Doc and Marty having another insane adventure, with the main subplot being 'Will Doc end up back in 1986 or not'? Or at least, that's the main question Dr. Emmett Brown is concerned about. _

_Now, this story was written after the BTTF game came out, and rereading it I found out a lot of the game's plot had subconsciously leaked into this (specifically the alternate reality, convincing an alternate version of your friend to help you, and some other things) but there's no way I could avoid it without rewriting the whole story. But I ensure you that the story is mostly different, and that the main ideas could and would probably have been concieved even if the game had not come out. Now, there are a few references to the Game, with some sentences directly lifted from it, but those are just that - references. And I would think that's okay. Anyway, have fun - or not - reading this new story. And don't forget to review!  
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**I'll Be Back In Time**

**Prologue**

**Sunday, October 27, 1985  
>1:13 PM PST<br>Hill Valley, California**

"Hey Doc! Where ya going now, back to the future?"

"Nope! Already been there!"

Marty McFly grinned and took a step back as the enormous steam train folded in, and then lifted up from the ground. He lightly squeezed Jennifer's shoulder as the time machine ascended into the sky, turned around and accelerated to eighty-eight miles per hour. After reaching that speed, the vehicle lit up and vanished into the past with an enormous explosion. Despite the fact that the train was in the sky, several feet away from them, Marty and Jennifer had to take a step back to prevent being blown back into the grass again.

Two familiar fire trails shot out of the place the train had once been, and subsequently dissolved after a few seconds. Marty stared at them, the last remnants of a hectic weekend. A gasp from Jennifer brought him back to reality. He looked at his girlfriend to see that she was watching the place the time train had departed from just like he was, only much more astonished.

Marty grinned at her and gently patted her on the back. "Relax, Jen" he whispered. "It's just a time machine."

Jennifer frowned, and smiled at him. She probably realized that to him, time machines were 'just' normal. He had been spending quite some time with them, after all. "You must have had quite a weekend" she said. "Travelling through time…"

Marty grinned again. "You bet" he said, gently steering her towards the truck. Jennifer looked at him in a way that made him blush. Even if this was all he had been forced to go through the entire mess for, it would have been worth it. Jennifer Parker was one clear reason for his idea that being trapped in the past was a dystopia – she simply wouldn't be there, and without her, Marty wouldn't want to be there.

However, Docwas not _here_. Marty came to a halt, thinking about the last words he had shared with his old friend. Doc had come back here 'to pick up Einstein', as he put it, and to ensure that he, Marty, wouldn't be worried. That was all very nice, but the seventeen-year-old couldn't help but think that those sentences implied more. That Doc, even now that he had got a time machine at his disposal once more, might not want to move back.

It did make a lot of sense. Though Marty still couldn't grasp that Doc had managed to father two sons of whom the oldest was at least seven or eight years old, he did get some of what it meant. To him, a few hours had passed since his departure from 1885. To Doc, years must have gone by. If Doc's home was in the 19th Century, with a wife and kids, would he really want to give all that up just to please one 1980s kid?

"Marty?" Jennifer asked. She nudged his side. "Are you all right?"

Marty looked at her, and from her to the truck they had reached. Sighing, he put his hand on the car. "Yeah, I'm fine" he said. "I was just… thinking. About Doc and everything."

"I can imagine that" Jennifer replied. "You did just go through an amazing adventure. Where have you been? _When _have you been?"

Marty smirked. "Too much places to keep track of" he said. "The fifties. The future. The Old West. Only a weekend passed here but it was more like two weeks for me, if not three."

Jennifer grinned. "So that's why you were acting like you hadn't seen me for a week yesterday" she said. "Because you really hadn't."

"That's right" Marty confirmed. "I had just spent a week in the 1950s. My first time trip. Doc revealed the time machine to me that night, but he was then shot by Libyan terrorists." Jennifer gasped, but didn't say a word. "When I was fleeing from them, I ended up in 1955. I, accidentally prevented my parents from falling in love, and worse, my mom got a crush on me."

Jennifer frowned. "How on earth did you manage _that_?"

"Actually, it was very easy" Marty muttered. "Dad was supposed to meet Mom because Mom's Dad hit him with the car. However, I pushed him out of the way and so I ended up unconscious in his place. When I woke up, I was in my mom's bedroom – she must have been tending to me ever since I was knocked out. And she was madly in love with me." Marty shook his head. "I can't imagine what I would have done if I hadn't managed to get her to fall for Dad instead."

"I suppose so" Jennifer whispered. "But we can talk about that later – and I see the issue is making you uncomfortable. Why were you thinking about Doc?"

Marty shrugged. "I was imagining that he might not want to come back now" he said. "I'm not sure how long he's been in 1885, but it must have been quite some time. Sure, it'll be nice to stay in 1985 for a while, and if he would show up this afternoon with another mission for me then I'd blow up on him, but…" He shrugged again. "He didn't even say anything, you know? No confirmation and no denial. Just that he came back to pick up Einstein and that he didn't want me to be worried. That kind of implies that he's staying in the Old West for good, but…"

"I understand" Jennifer said, patting Marty's back. "I hope it won't come to that, but… well, at least he did give you that picture to remember him by. I know it's not much, but at least it's something."

Marty sighed. "Right" he muttered. "I do hope he'll come back, you know. My life just won't be the same without Doc. After all that trouble I went through to save his life… twice… it's probably kind of selfish, since he's got Clara and all, but I would really miss him."

"I know" Jennifer said. "But well, it's all in the future. Or perhaps in the past, where and when Doc is now, but even then…" She swung an arm around his shoulder. "Why don't you focus on clearing out the wreckage of the car and recovering from your adventure, and then you can think about Doc later." She smiled. "He might be back before you know it."

Marty nodded. "You might be right" he said. "I would really like to believe that. But even if it isn't going to be true… well, you've got a point about the car as well. We really can't leave it lying around." He walked over to the truck and opened the trunk. "Let's see. How much do you think we can store in here?"

"Not much" Jennifer replied. "What are you planning to do? You can't take the entire car…"

"I won't" Marty said. "We'll just have to take the most important things – the flux capacitor, the time circuits and the Fusion reactor, and any other things that may look important." He smirked as he saw the confused look on Jennifer's face. "I'll explain it all later. Let's get to work now."

Jennifer nodded, and they set off towards the car wreckage. As they did so, an image of Doc floated through Marty's head once more. He wondered where the inventor might be. Was he still in the 19th Century? Had he made a decision about his future? What had happened to Jules and Verne, to Clara?

Marty shook his head. Never mind that, there was no way he could get answers to those questions now. And that might be for the best – he'd really like a few weeks to relax, even if that meant spending time without his best friend. However, he already knew that one day, he would seriously start missing his friend, and wonder about the answers to those questions, answers he knew he couldn't get right now. But perhaps, just perhaps, there would be a day he would find out. And waiting for that day would certainly be worth it.


	2. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: Nobody... calls me... the owner of the BTTF movies. **

_Author's Note: Okay, it's been a while. In fact, it's been a rather long while. I promised in the latest TDITW chapter that I would try to update sooner than before, and of course I didn't. I originally planned to update in April, then it was May, and then it was June, and then the date featured in this story (or at least, mentioned at the end of this chapter and featured in the next few) was coming up, and I knew I couldn't let that date pass by. And because I let myself run out of time again, I won't update TDITW until tomorrow. Unless I get lazy again. And I'm a pessimist, so I'm definitely taking that option into account.  
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_Why did I post one chapter for this story, then cease updates? The reasons for that are multiple, first of all being that I wanted to upload TDITW first (and that worked out  
><em>so _well) and that I simply wasn't satisfied with the story yet. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, I suppose. I also had distractions, but those are lame excuses. Anyway, I reread IBBIT once in a while, revised something here and there, but in general saw no reason to let it slip out of my control by uploading a chapter. However, there will always be stuff to change. Always. And as a non-native English speaker, my stories will never attain the perfection I want them to. So, why not upload a chapter, wait for reviews, and perhaps somebody will even see something I missed? It's more productive than just staring at the story once a month and rephrasing random sentences, I'm sure. So anyway, there we are. This is the second (or more accurately, the first, as the other was a prologue) chapter of IBBIT. Enjoy. Oh, and please review.  
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_PS: Sorry for the lame disclaimer. I had a cool one thought up some time ago but it slipped my mind in-between and I have no idea what it might have been.  
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_**Chapter One**_

**Saturday, March 23, 1895  
>6:00 PM PST<br>Hill Valley, California**

Dr. Emmett Brown felt on top of the world.

Here he was, twenty-five years before he was born, celebrating his sort-of-seventy-fifth birthday with a marvelous wife and two great sons. It was a fantastic position, one which he would have never imagined himself in just ten years ago. He knew he had mused about this idea several times, far too often in fact, but it never ceased to astound him.

He looked at Clara, who looked back. "Enjoying your birthday, Emmett?" she asked. "No wonder, you don't have to do any of the work."

Doc smirked. "You were the one to volunteer for taking all my house duties today, so I'm not going to ask if I can still do them anyway. I'm just happy you loved me enough to ask in the first place."

Clara stopped her dishwashing to smile at him. "Come on, Emmett" she said, embracing him. "I'll never stop being in love with the man who saved me from a nasty fall into the ravine. You saved my life, and even if that hadn't been enough to win me over, your handsomeness and your nice personality certainly were." She leaned in to kiss him.

"Mo-om" Verne said, in an annoyed tone of voice that indicated he'd seen this sort of thing happen far too often. "Weren't we going to unwrap Dad's packages now?"

"That's right, mo-mom" Jules said. Doc noticed that his hesitation at calling his mother wasn't annoyance, like with Verne, but a reluctance to call her 'mom' in the first place. Jules _had_ adapted to calling his parents 'Mom' and 'Dad' rather than 'mother' and 'father', but he did have a tendency to slip back in his old ways.

Clara nodded at her sons, and pulled herself loose from their embrace. "You're right, boys. At least we have the time now. I can barely imagine anymore how hard it used to be back when we didn't have that dishwasher."

Doc smirked. "Yeah, you are definitely quick to adapt" he said. "I knew you would eventually come around to the inventions I made, since you're a smart, forward-thinking woman, but the introduction of so many future conveniences to our household might have made you nervous."

"Well, I'm glad it didn't in the end" Clara replied. "I know I had some adjustment problems, but I think I've gotten used to a daily life of time travel now. Or at least, to using future technology and hiding it from prying eyes."

Her husband nodded. "And the boys are good at that as well" he replied. "I'd worried about that – I know young kids can adapt easier, but I wasn't so sure whether they would understand why and how to hide the knowledge from their peers. Well, Jules I knew wouldn't pose a problem, but Verne…"

Verne frowned. "Hey!" he called out, aware that he was being placed below his brother but not really grasping what it was about.

Doc smiled. "Sorry, Vernie" he apologized. "Now, I heard you had some packages for me to unwrap?"

Clara nodded. "That's right. Whose do you want to open first?"

The inventor thought about that for a moment. "I'll take Verne's first" he said.

"But… Dad!" Jules exclaimed, disappointed. Verne's face, on the other hand, brightened.

"Sorry, Jules" Doc said. "It was your turn last time, and you'll be able to present your package in a minute as well. Now, Verne…"

"Here you go, Dad" Verne called out, as he gave his father a square package. Doc swiftly tore it open and took out a painting of him and Clara standing in front of the time machine. "Thank you, Vernie" he said. "That's a very nice drawing you made."

"Verne?" Clara reminded him.

"Oh!" Verne blushed. "Um, you're welcome, Dad."

"Good to hear" Doc said, winking. "Now, Jules, what did you get me?"

In response, his elder son gave him a small box. As Doc opened it, he could see it contained several small tubes and potions. "A chemic kit" he said. "Thanks, Jules."

"You're welcome, Dad."

"So." Doc looked around. "That's… it?"

Clara chuckled. "Don't try to hide your disappointment, Emmett. You know our sons can see through it."

"I suppose so" Doc said, blushing. "I'm just used to getting more presents – last year, the boys each gave me three. I suppose I'm getting spoiled, huh? Especially considering the fact that, before I ended up in the Nineteenth Century, I only ever got presents from Marty…"

"Perhaps" Clara contemplated. "But there's a reason for all this, Emmett. Why don't you come outside with us, and all your questions will be answered."

Doc grinned. "That sounds like something I could have said. Fine, lead the way."

As the boys – or at least, Verne – squealed with delight, the Brown family walked out of the house. To his surprise, Doc saw they were heading towards the garage. He wondered whatever Clara could want there – he practically spent half his life in the garage, so surely they couldn't have hidden a present for him there. Of course, there was the fact that a person rarely sees what's right under his nose, but Doc doubted he could have ever been that blind.

When they entered, Doc didn't see anything strange either, which made the situation even weirder. The garage looked the same as it had the day before, when he'd last spent time in it. He didn't begin to grasp what Clara was up to until the moment she headed over to the cabin of the train.

"You've got a present for me in the future?" he wondered. "But you can't fly the train!"

"Well, I could certainly try" Clara replied, smirking. "But you're right about that. I therefore had to prepare your surprise when _you _flew to the 21st Century. Remember that short trip we took in January?"

Doc nodded. "Of course" he stated. "To get Verne's medicine." Verne had suffered from a bad cold around the New Year, which had prompted him to make a short trip to 2016 to pick up some modern aspirin. Clara had expressed the wish to come along, a desire he'd never really understood… until now. "Did you do something while we were there?"

"That's right" Clara confirmed. "I had to get back really quick, but at least you bought my excuse that I wanted to visit a shop in the future."

Doc whistled. "To think I almost didn't want to let you go there on your own" he said. "That would have been a piece of cake compared to…to…"

Clara smirked again. "No, I'm not going to tell you, Emmett" she said. "You'll just have to wait and see. I think you'll be very happy."

"I hope so" Doc said. "I'm not sure what you could have afforded."

"We had some help" Clara said. "We're not the only ones who want you to have a nice birthday present, you know."

"You recruited Marty to help you?" Doc said, perplexed. Clara nodded. "All right, I think I've severely underestimated you thus far."

Clara tried to just smile, but couldn't keep a satisfied grin from appearing on her face. "It's all right, Emmett" she said. "We can talk about that after we've picked up your present."

Doc nodded, and they entered the train. Once more, he couldn't help but admire his own work. The current time machine was certainly a far cry from the old, abandoned steam train he had taken over from the railroad company over seven years ago. It had taken so many sleepless nights, long days, and a lot of money to turn this train into a working time machine. Even if he would abandon time travel all together again, like he had wanted to after his first trip to the future with Marty and Jennifer, he was sure he couldn't stomach destroying the train as easy as he had been able to destroy the DeLorean. That hadn't been an easy decision either, and he was glad he could have had the ultimate decision taken out of his hands by leaving it up to that freight train, but at least he hadn't been forced to all but rebuild that machine from the ground up.

He looked around to see Clara instructing the boys to put their seatbelts on. As usual on a time excursion, they were too enthusiastic to sit down, but they complied with their mother's wishes nevertheless – probably understanding that if they didn't, the departure for the future would be delayed. "Where are we going, Dad?" Jules asked.

"Ask your mother" Doc said, smiling. "She's come up with this plan, after all."

"June 5th, 2016" Clara said. "Four days after the visit for Verne's cold medicine."

Doc nodded, then twisted the appropriate gears to produce the new date. The scientific part of him secretly wanted to tear apart the time circuit display system and install an entirely modern keypad, possibly even more advanced than the one he had had in the DeLorean. However, every time he contemplated that, he was reminded of the nights he had spent to produce this system, which was cutting-edge for 1895 if not beyond it. He had spent so much time on every part of this train that he didn't dare to replace any of it. Even the hover conversion had been an addition mostly, and had left the old system largely in place.

He turned to Clara. "Any preferences for the time?"

"The time of date, you mean?" Her husband nodded. "Around now, preferably. Perhaps a little earlier… make that 5:30."

Doc smirked, as he added the new information. "You've really got this all planned out, haven't you?"

"You don't know the half of it" Clara replied, smirking back.

Doc smiled back at her and shook his head with wonder. It surprised him how much his wife could hide things from him, especially complicated presents like this. "One question, though" he said. "Are you going to lead me directly to whatever you've got in mind, or are you going to blindfold me in hopes that I won't notice what I'm heading towards?"

Clara chuckled. "I think I can do fine without a blindfold" she said. "But I wasn't planning on leading you directly to your target either. I'd thought that maybe we could go to that café in the Square first. The Café 80s, right?"

"That's right" Doc replied. "Yes, that sounds like an acceptable idea. We could at least use a snack there before heading over to… whatever you want to show me." He frowned. "There might be one issue you haven't thought of, though – what about our clothes?" He pulled on the fabric of his shirt. "They might be modern fashion for 1895, but they're definitely not for 2016."

Clara smiled sheepishly. "You're right, I forgot about that" she admitted. "Should I try to find something else?"

Doc shook his head. "No, I doubt anything we have might be acceptable for 2016" he said. "_Now_ I regret buying clothes of other time periods just for me. At least it's now spring, and we're not wearing winter clothes anymore – wouldn't want to walk around in June with them on." Clara nodded. "I think we can manage with these for a few hours. And even if people are surprised, we could always tell them we're headed to a party. Though I doubt there will be anyone who asks – they'll just stare. People of the future are much more focused on their own affairs as opposed to those of others."

"You told me" Clara replied. "The future is certainly different from now. I couldn't imagine living there." She looked at Doc, hesitated a moment, and then cleared her throat. "Emmett… do you ever want to move back?"

Doc frowned. "That's too complicated a question to answer in just a few seconds" he replied. "Especially now that the boys are arguing again." He motioned over his shoulder, where Jules and Verne were having one of their usual squabbles. "All right, boys, break it up."

Verne looked up at him. "I thought we were going to leave!"

"We are" Doc confirmed. "Sorry for the delay. Clara, would you mind sitting down?"

"Of course" Clara said, taking her seat next to him. "But shouldn't you sit down?"

"I'm afraid that the position of the controls of this time machine make it rather hard for me to do so" Doc said, sighing wistfully. "It's at times like these when I miss the DeLorean. But there's no point in reminiscing about the past when you can't change it, not without creating all sorts of possible risks to the continuum. I'll just have to do with this machine."

Glancing at the boys and his wife, Doc then turned the switch for the engine. The train slowly chugged outside over the narrow spur out of the garage. When it was fully outside, he turned on the hover conversion, and the train lifted up. He smiled, enjoying the thrill of flying his train. The garage he had built for it in 1895 was primitively defended for 1980s standards, but he was sure there was no one who even suspected the slightest bit of what was going on at the Brown family garage. Their house was isolated from the outside world, and even the McFly family, who had become casual acquaintances of theirs over time, rarely came over. The system was primitive, but it worked. His secret was safe here.

The train accelerated through the sky and began chugging up to eighty-eight. He looked to his side to see Clara being taken aback by the speed. He couldn't blame her – she'd been used to 1880s trains with their slow speed and slow acceleration all her life, so the fact that the hover-converted train could go so fast so easy had come as a shock to her. Jules and Verne on the other hand seemed to be mostly enthusiastic, as they realized how much speed was needed for the trip to the 21st Century. Doc smiled fondly as he thought of his boys, and then noticed the train was going over seventy.

"Brace yourselves for temporal displacement!" he called out. Jules, Verne and Clara clung to their seats while Doc took a tighter grip on the controls of the train. Within seconds, the vehicle hit eighty-eight miles per hour and was transported into the future.


	3. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I own lots of things. Clothes, comic books, regular books, a watch, a garden of some sorts... but Back to the Future isn't among them, I'm sorry. **

_Author's Note: Now, here's another update. Although I probably shouldn't say another since it has been so long. It is about... well, what happened after the previous chapter. Doc and family exploring 2015, and some guy appearing in the middle who sets up the main plot. The subplot of Marty and Doc is also toyed with, and will be to the very end when stuff will happen. For now, have fun reading the story, and please review. Even if you think it's crappy. _Especially_ if you think it's crappy, I could learn to improve from a review like that.  
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**Chapter Two**

**Sunday, June 5, 2016  
>5:30 PM PDT<br>Hill Valley, California**

As usual, the shock of the time travel wore off the moment Doc was sure he couldn't take it anymore. The lights cleared, and he could see the skyway around him. He had to swerve the train several times to avoid running into cars, and winced when he saw the drivers giving him stunned looks. Even in 2016, a flying steam train was not a sight one saw each day.

"We're there?" Clara asked. She looked through the window. "You know, I don't think I'll ever get used to visiting this time period."

"Me neither – although I would most likely have ended up living in it if I hadn't met you" Doc replied. "After all, I did end up being rejuvenated, and my non-rejuvenated self died at eighty-three. It's likely that I would still be alive if, say, Biff hadn't stolen the time machine and I had dismantled it in 1985."

"Probably" Clara said, with a sigh. She didn't like talking about Emmett not meeting her, which would have caused her to die in Eastwood – or rather, Clayton – Ravine. "Where do we go now?"

"The Courthouse Square is at the next exit to the right" Doc said. "It may take a few minutes before we get there, but you shouldn't be bored. After all, there is enough to see, even so high up."

There was indeed. Being unfamiliar with even airplanes, seeing a world of flying cars and signs was all new to Jules and Verne, even if they had seen it just once before. They simply stared out of the window, amazed by it all, and Clara eventually followed their example. Doc noticed she didn't look down – after all, she'd gotten a severe case of being afraid of heights after that near-incident on the steam train when Marty went back to the future. At least she hadn't become afraid of trains – that would have made life much more difficult for her, since there was nothing else he could've built the new time machine out of.

After about five minutes, the seventy-five-year-old inventor took the skyway exit towards the Courthouse Square. He headed over towards Hill Valley Park and gently put down the train in the middle of the park. "At least this area is sparsely visited" he informed his family. "In 2015, it has become a place where the original nature is restored or preserved as much as possible. Some people come here, but it's mostly empty – and thus very convenient for parking a time machine."

They got out, locked the train, and started walking uptown. To the boys, everything looked new and different. Technically, it was, as though they had seen Hill Valley of the future once before, a few months ago, that had been 2019. This was three years earlier, but it certainly didn't look any less advanced. As a matter of fact, everything looked very similar to how it had appeared in 2019, and in 2015. Doc figured that if there were changes, they had most likely happened outside of the square.

"Nice to see the future courthouse again" Jules said. "It is a very impressive building. Even though it's sad the clock is stuck at 10:04."

"Yes, and I don't think it will ever be replaced" Doc replied. "We saw it be like this when we went to 2019, and that was sixty-four years after the clock tower was struck by lightning. That's almost as much time as the clock had been working, from 1885 to 1955."

"Right" Verne said. "At least they don't have any of those silly sharks this time." He looked at the Holomax Theater with disgust. "What do they think they're doing, scaring innocent passer-bys?"

Doc chuckled. "Well, we're in the future" he pointed out. "Even for 1985, it is strange, but for 2015, it might be a common form of advertising. Although I fail to grasp how being attacked by a hologram is supposed to _encourage_ people to watch a movie. I would think they'd be scared off by it, like you were in 2019 and Marty was in 2015."

"Yes" Clara mused. "I'm not even going to pretend that I understand the people of the future, Emmett. They just think different from how we do. I've gotten a little used to it by now, but if I wanted to fully grasp them then there'd still be a long way to go."

Doc nodded. They quietly walked past the Blast To The Past shop. Doc noticed the almanac Marty had bought last October hadn't been replaced. As they then entered the Café 80s, he heard a familiar tune coming to greet him. "Back in Time" he whispered, smiling.

"What's that, Emmett?" Clara asked.

"It's one of the songs featured in the 'Teens in Time' movie trilogy" Doc replied. "Remember, we watched them two months ago?"

"Yeah" Verne said. "They were some of the _few_ movies you bought for us to watch."

Doc grinned. "Well, I can't get everything from the future" he said. "People would get more than a little suspicious if I bought out an entire store – although I suppose I could get around that by visiting different times. But it is expensive to supply a future television and video player with power in 1895."

"Whatever you say, Dad" Verne replied.

"Emmett?" Clara said, having a thought. "Do you only visit the 2010s when you go to the future, or have you been going to 1985 to see Marty, too?"

Doc shivered. That was one question he'd hoped for her to avoid. "Only the 2010s" he admitted. "I've wanted to visit Marty, but… it's complicated. I'll tell you later."

Clara frowned, but nodded in (temporal) agreement. Doc sighed with relief. "Come on" he said, motioning the boys over. "There are some seats which are still empty."

oooooooo

If there was one person in the world who believed he'd gotten off badly when it came to the distribution of luck, it was Biff Howard Tannen. For the past sixty-one years, bad luck had been plaguing him as if it was some kind of glue. And it had all started on the day Calvin Klein arrived in Hill Valley. Or, as he knew now, Martin Seamus McFly.

Biff had never stopped disliking the McFlys after George knocked him out, but it was when he found out about time travel that his dislike had grown even more, as one of his other old enemies had proven to be a McFly. It had been George's son, Marty McFly, who had gotten him to crash into a manure truck. Twice. Who had humiliated him in front of half the town. Who'd encouraged George to stand up to him. He supposed he couldn't blame McFly for getting George to date Lorraine – somehow, it had to have happened even if Marty hadn't been there, or else how could he have existed in the first place? – but he had reason enough to hate him anyway.

When he got home from 1955, he had been utterly exhausted. The day had worn him out, something he wasn't used to anymore, not at the age of seventy-eight. He had slept for a few hours, simply falling unconscious behind a bunch of trash cans. When he had woken up, he had been dirty, cold and hungry, but neither of it mattered. Because he had changed the past. He had made himself rich.

It had thus been a severe disappointment when he came home that morning and discovered that it was exactly as he'd left it. And it had gotten worse when he discovered why, when a new set of memories started intruding on his old ones a few hours later – a _very_ odd experience. Marty had gone back to 1955 a second time, and had stolen his almanac.

The entire situation had left him with a desire for revenge. However, that revenge would be hard to get, since Doc Brown had been gone for thirty years. Nevertheless, he'd speculated. Speculated about what he would do if he ever got such an opportunity again. And after months of planning, he knew he had a good plan. A better one than he had last time. What was more, he had gotten himself a health cure, basically the forefront of rejuvenation technology. It had cost a lot of money, but at least it had made him be in better shape than he had been in last time. Now all he had to have was a little luck, which he hadn't had for so long.

But he had had it in the end. Because now, not believing his eyes, Biff Tannen was staring across the Café 80s at Doc Brown, accompanied by a woman and kids in attire that was more old fashioned than the clothes from his own youth. He knew time travel was behind all this, and he knew that he didn't want anything more than take advantage of it.

And thus, Biff never let Brown and what seemed to be his family (Biff hadn't a clue where he had gotten one from, but didn't really care) out of his sights. And thus, when they headed out of the café, he headed after them as inconspicuously as he could.

Because he knew he would get a chance. A chance like the one he had in October. And this time, he would be prepared to hold onto it.

oooooooo

Doc still wasn't sure what his wife and kids were planning the moment they flew the train into the parking lot of Goldie Wilson's Hover Conversions. After all, the train had already been hover-converted. And though the shop sold used cars, too, he was sure that his family hadn't bought an automobile for him.

Thus, he found himself utterly disbelieving his eyes the moment he set sight on what Clara proclaimed to be his present: an old, sturdy, damaged but yet beautiful DeLorean. Except for a few bumps here and there and the time travel equipment he had installed in his previous vehicle, this car looked exactly like the old DeLorean. It was like a dream come to.

"Great Scott!" he exclaimed, stunned. "Clara, how on earth did you manage this!"

Clara grinned. "Well, I told you I had asked Marty to help me" she said. "And he did become rich, so financing a sports car would be easier for him than for anybody else. Although he did complain about the costs."

"I can imagine" Doc said. "DeLoreans were expensive enough in 1982, when I bought mine, and I can't imagine they'll become cheaper in the future, especially since they will go out of production a few years after 1985 and become rare collectors items. You didn't pressure Marty to help you, did you?"

"Of course not" Clara said, appearing insulted. "I was the one to suggest it, but Marty immediately volunteered to help – and I didn't know it was that expensive until I asked about it. Anyway, once I explained how much you missed the old time machine… well, Marty agreed with me it certainly sounded like an appropriate present for your seventy-fifth birthday."

"It's beautiful" Doc agreed. "How was Marty doing, anyway? I haven't visited him in quite a while now…"

"He was doing all right" Clara said. "For as far as I could tell at least, I don't know him all that well. But you can see for yourself, too – we planned to meet up after you picked up the car."

Doc chuckled. "Imagine" he muttered. "I thought you weren't able to hide secrets from me. Looks like I've just been proven wrong."

The car mechanic appeared from the main office at that moment. "I see you introduced your husband to the vehicle, ma'am?" he said, giving them a smile. "Hope he likes it."

"I certainly do" Doc said, grinning from ear to ear. "Have you got the papers ready?"

"That's right" the mechanic said. "All we need now is your thumbprint, and you'll be free to take it out for a test ride. Your wife told me you were travelling in a train at the moment, and you were going to haul it inside, so you might be interested in flying over the parking lot for a few minutes to see whether the car is to your liking."

"I think it will be" Doc said, shooting a glare at Clara for telling the mechanic they had come by train – well, at least that wasn't the near-impossibility it was in 1985 or 1895 anymore. "I'd like to take up your offer, though" he added, looking at the DeLorean anxiously.

The mechanic smiled, and after Doc pressed his thumb to a plate, he gave the inventor another plate to press his thumb to, and then fiddled a few seconds with the controls – Doc figured he was sending electronic knowledge to the DeLorean so that it would recognize him as its owner. "Here you go" he said. "Be careful, though – it's an old car after all."

Doc nodded. "I think I know how to handle them" he said. Turning to Clara, he added: "I'll be back in five minutes, okay?"

"Take your time, Emmett" Clara said. Doc stared at his loving wife, who had given him a birthday present that had essentially restored his old dream. In an impulse, he reached out and kissed her. Clara kissed him back, but released him after a few seconds.

"Have fun" she told him. Doc nodded, and got inside the DeLorean. Seeing the familiar controls of the car gave him the thrill of déjà vu. It was odd to see it without the time machine parts, but that couldn't be helped right now. He activated the hover controls and the car lifted up from the parking lot, eventually stopping its acceleration at four feet from the ground. The inventor hit the gas pedal, and the car shot out into the sky, further and further and higher and higher. Doc let out a thrill of delight as he flew the DeLorean away from the car shop and accelerated over Hill Valley.


	4. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything, except owning Back to the Future. **

_Author's Note: Hi, here I am again. Hope you all had a great November 12th today. I wish I had. But, well, it was about time for me to upload again, so this is the next chapter you'd been waiting for. It concerns a changing reality, and a particularly unhappy Doc Brown. From now on, this story is going to be mostly in Doc's POV, although Marty's POV will eventually reappear. Oh, and please read, review, and deliver constructive criticism. _

**Chapter Three**

**Sunday, June 5, 2016  
>06:15 PM PDT<br>Hill Valley, California**

It was so close, and yet unreachable.

Biff Tannen felt utterly frustrated as he looked at the object he had been wishing to see for so long. An actual time machine was right in front of him, and yet he lacked the ability to get inside, for two reasons. One, he had clearly seen Doc Brown lock it, and he had no idea how to break into a steam train – he had been preparing to break the lock of a DeLorean, after all, and DeLoreans and steam trains were very different things. The second reason was that he simply had no idea how this machine worked.

One peek into the window had told him the inside mechanisms were a lot more complicated than the time machine parts of the DeLorean had been. Even assuming he managed to get the engine to work, he wasn't sure he would get out of Hill Valley alive. And even if he did, and he succeeded in getting to the past… it was all too much of a gamble. And though this was his one big chance at altering his life for the better, Biff knew it was too much of a risk to do it alone. He needed help.

Quite surprisingly, that help arrived just moments after the thought had slipped through his mind.

The two young boys he had seen with Brown earlier, presumably his sons, came walking off the parking lot and towards the train. They looked bored, and the younger one leaned against the brick wall that separated the car shop from the sidewalk.

"Couldn't Dad have given us the key of the train?" the younger boy whined. "There's a lot to see out here, but… it's strangely boring."

"Dad doesn't have a key" the older boy reminded him. "Remember? He's got those thumb locks installed on the train a few months ago. They can only be operated by Mom or him. Even if he had wanted to let us in, he couldn't."

As the younger boy whined in complaint against that, Biff smiled. That was good to hear. Although it confirmed what he already knew – that it would be nearly impossible for him to get access – it did tell him who _did_ have access. He supposed the boys' mother was the woman he had seen earlier. It confirmed his suspicions of this group being a family. And Biff knew exactly how to exploit that.

He carefully sneaked around the train until he was just a few yards away from the boys. Then, after calculating his chances, he stepped forwards, grabbed the older boy's shoulder, and held it roughly.

"Hey, what do you think you're…" the boy started. When he looked at Biff's face, he gasped. "No… it can't be…"

"Buford?" the younger boy squeaked, shivering.

The older boy shook his head. "This is 2016, remember. That's gotta be Biff Tannen."

"Clever kid" Biff said, taking a knife out of his pocket and pressing it against his victim's throat. The boy yelped. "What's your name?"

"Um, Jules" the older boy said, staring at the knife.

"I'm Verne" the younger boy added, too terrified to move. "Emmett Brown and Clara Clayton are our parents."

"Nice to hear that" Biff said, smirking. "Now, Verne, why don't you go fetch your mother and ask her to come over here. Tell her you need her with something. And don't even think about running away, or I might be forced to use this knife on your brother. I can see you from out here, you know."

"You mean to say you won't use it if he won't run away?" Jules said. "In that case, your threat against _me_ is a bit ineffective."

"We'll just see about that" Biff muttered, pressing the knife tighter. "You wouldn't want to risk things, would you?" Jules went silent, and Verne nodded reluctantly. He ran off towards the parking lot, looking over his shoulder every few seconds.

"Now" Biff muttered. "Looks like this rope might come in handy." He had picked up some rope from the car store after it turned out that he would be facing an entire family of Browns, and it had been likely to become necessary to tie them up. He could not control all three of them at the same time, after all – especially if crackpot Brown himself came to the rescue.

He turned to Jules, and tied him up. The boy didn't struggle, terrified of the knife. Probably hadn't been in any such situation before. Biff found himself wondering just where… no, _when_… they came from. Well, it didn't matter. What mattered was where he was going now.

Just as Biff had finished tying Jules up, the woman named Clara came around the corner with Verne. Clara gasped at what she saw. "Biff Tannen!" she exclaimed, stunned.

"Sorry, mom" Verne whispered, his eyes pointed at the ground. "He was gonna kill Jules… I had to lure you over."

"It's all right, Vernie" Clara replied. She shivered, but remained standing as firm as she could. "What do you want, Tannen?"

"First, I'd like to tie up your other son, too" Biff said, pulling some more of the rope around Verne, while holding the knife against his throat so that he wouldn't resist either. As he finished, he turned back to Clara. "Now, why don't you introduce me to that time machine your husband built?"

Clara nodded, understanding she didn't have a choice. She glared at him. "I wish Emmett was here to teach you a lesson" she whispered, angrily.

"He isn't, and I won't let you stall long enough until he comes back" Biff replied. "Move it!"

Reluctantly, Clara walked over to the train, and pressed her thumb against the plate. Biff smiled broadly as the doors opened. At last the event he had been waiting for for so long was taking place. He risked a brief look over his shoulder to ensure that Crackpot Brown was nowhere to be seen. Then, he goaded the boys and Clara into the train.

After a few minutes, he managed to tie the boys to their seats and get Clara to explain to him just how the controls worked. He then tied her up as well. She didn't struggle, but from the way she kept staring at him with that firm, hateful look on her face, he could see she didn't like it.

"You know, you've got spunk" Biff commented. "I kind of like you. Maybe I should leave you to one of my ancestors, once I've finished what I wanted to do."

Clara bristled. "Don't even think I'll go along with that" she hissed. "I may not be able to resist now, but if you think you can get me to court any Tannen then you're wrong!"

Biff shrugged, ignoring her. "Whatever you say" he muttered. "Now, let's get this thing back to the past."

After a few moments of struggling, he managed to use Clara's instructions to type in the destination time he had planned upon. Then, he carefully activated the flying circuits. Though he was used to flying a car, flying the train shook him thoroughly and he saw his captives grin at his peril.

"You just smile" he said. "It's not like you can stop me now anyway."

Within another minute, Biff managed to work out the controls of the train. The train accelerated through the sky, on its way to time travel.

oooooooo

Doc smiled, as he carefully flew the DeLorean back to the parking lot. The ride had been incredible. He'd remembered flying the old time machine, of course, but remembering something from long ago and actually experiencing it in the here and now were different matters all together. He didn't think he had had this much fun in weeks.

Cautiously, he steered the car to the ground, allowing his memories of flying the DeLorean – the time travelling one, that is – to take control. He managed a perfect landing, or at least he presumed so because he didn't hear or feel anything strange. With a sigh of relief, he exited the car.

"That was a long trip!" the mechanic said. "Suppose you really enjoyed the car, didn't you?"

"I did" Doc confessed. "How long was I gone?"

The mechanic checked his watch. "I believe about ten minutes" he said. "Could be a little less. Anyway, I'm glad you're happy."

Doc nodded, then frowned. "Where did Clara go?" he asked.

"Your wife?" the mechanic asked. Doc nodded. "Oh, she went off for some errand. One of your… kids called her out for it."

"I see" Doc said. He noticed the look on the mechanic's face – what the hell was he doing with kids that young? – but ignored it. "Well, see you."

"I hope not" the mechanic joked. "Have a nice day, sir."

"Same to you" Doc said, as he walked off the parking lot. He was glad Clara had managed to adjust enough to his visits to 2015 that she'd been able to set up this plan. Sure, it had been startling to hear it, but this plan meant that she was getting friendly with Marty, friendly enough to set up something like this, and he knew the kids already liked Marty (or at least, they liked the image of him they probably had after hearing all his stories about the teenager). Even though they were living in the past, that apparently didn't mean that they couldn't have friends in the future. It was almost as if it were – or would be – their second home.

As he was musing about that, Doc exited the parking lot and looked around for his wife. He didn't see her and the kids anywhere, and his confusion about this issue meant that it took a few seconds before another matter hit him. Hard.

The train was gone.

Doc staggered back, holding onto the wall for support. No! This couldn't be happening! He had to be seeing things! He had locked the train, and no one but Clara could get inside! Surely she wouldn't have left without him, would she? Of course, it could have been some part of her plan, but he'd thought all of that had been resolved now. What could have possessed her to leave? _Especially_ when she knew he was due to return very soon, and would be freaked out about it!

As he continued to think about that, the inventor could suddenly hear a faint chugging sound. He immediately looked up. Sure enough, the train was there, accelerating through the sky. "CLARA!" he cried out and jumped – a foolish move, since he naturally could never reach it. And by the time he got back to the DeLorean, his only other possible mode of transportation, it might already be too late. The machine was rapidly heading up to eighty-eight.

Doc frowned, as the train continued to increase in speed. Why did he think Clara was behind the wheel at all? She would never leave him here. He knew that. Even if she had something else planned, she probably wouldn't even trust herself to fly the train. That left one option – if it was not Clara behind the wheel, and it wasn't Jules or Verne (naturally), and somehow he doubted she'd recruited Marty or Jennifer for it, then it had to be someone else. And there was no one else Clara knew in 2016, so no one she'd trust to fly the time machine.

That could only mean that the train was being flown by someone Clara didn't trust, and he didn't trust. The train had been stolen.

As that possibility shot through his head, other thoughts immediately came after it, like who could be the thief, whether he knew it was a time machine, and what he (or she, for all Doc knew) could be planning to do with it. But before he could really explore any of those thoughts, the train hit eighty-eight. Doc watched as his beloved time machine lit up and disappeared through time. Fire trails filled the darkening sky.

Wait. Darkening sky?

Doc looked around, and gasped. The sky was indeed dark, darker than it had been just a few seconds earlier. As he looked to the left, he could still detect some light, but from the right side, it looked like the world was… warping. Changing, in someway. And although he had never been in this situation before (well, except that one time in 2015) he knew exactly what it could be.

"Great Scott!" the seventy-five-year-old exclaimed. He staggered back and held onto the wall for support, closing his eyes. It was as though he felt the change hit inside him, with an odd feeling rippling through his brain. After a few moments, when all had passed, Doc dared to open his eyes again – and his jaw promptly dropped.

Gone was the well-maintained parking lot of the car shop, one of the many in Hill Valley. Though there were still a lot of cars around, they were in much worse condition than before. Ironically, the only one in relatively good condition was his old DeLorean, though it, too, looked slightly different – a few more dents, and the coloring had become somewhat darker – although that could be a mistake made through the darkness that enveloped it all. As Doc looked towards the car shop, he saw it was now a ruin. This place had gone out of business years ago, and apparently, the cars stored here were put here at random.

Almost not daring, Doc looked in the direction of the Courthouse Square, about half a mile away. Immediately, he saw that on the place the Courthouse had once narrowly tipped over the other houses in-between it and the car shop, something that could only be described as some sort of skyscraper towered. Doc couldn't tell what the rest of the square looked like, but he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

"Great Scott" he repeated, stunned. All this could not have been created in just a few seconds. Which left one, unfortunate, explanation – history had changed. And not necessarily for the better.


	5. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: I don't own BTTF. Yes, back to the regular phrasing this time, because making up excuses gets boring both for you and for me. **

_Author's Note: It's been a long wait, isn't it? And not for any particular reason either. Anyway, this is the newest chapter, posted on March 19th 2014. Doc Brown explores this brave new world, and instantly gets captured by the local authorities and thrown in jail. But all is not bad, for he gets to meet an unexpected visitor...  
><em>

**Chapter Four**

**Sunday, June 5, 2016  
>06:35 PM PDT<br>Tannen Valley, California**

After concluding that Hill Valley had changed because history had changed, Doc had walked over to the DeLorean, gotten into the car, and leaned back in despair. He was now without a time machine – or at least, he hadn't seen it returning – and without his family, in an alternate version of his hometown which he didn't know. What was more, he was in 2016, thirty-one years into the future (or hundred-and-twenty-one, depending how one looked at it). There was no one he knew here. No one who could tell him what had happened. No one who knew his secret and could help him in his slow, cautious steps to repair the past.

No one, except one man. Martin Seamus McFly.

Doc considered the matter thoroughly, and eventually came to the conclusion that he had some reason for hope. Even if history had changed drastically, Marty could still be around. He'd still existed in the world where Biff had become rich and powerful, after all. If this world was any similar, he was likely to encounter a different, yet a familiar Marty, that could help him. Might be able to help him. Somehow.

The prospects weren't very bright, but the inventor did not want to give up hope. He had never done that, even in his darkest moments in 1885 – well, except for the night after Clara had temporarily broken up with him, but that had been a thing he truly could not recover from. Now, Clara had left him again, but Doc was sure it had not been voluntarily. Therefore, he _had _to figure out what to do, for her sake.

In a way, this situation was similar to when he had been first trapped in 1885. Far away from his home time, in a strange and potentially hostile environment, an unknown era which he knew little about (though he had anticipated some aspects of the Old West from reading extensively about it in his youth, others had taken him completely by surprise) but in which he needed to survive because someone depended on him. In that case, it had been Marty. Now, it was his family. He could not give up. Never.

The sky gradually got darker, and Doc noticed there were strange orange tints to it. The tints were familiar – he had seen them the last time history had been changed. Then, it had all been Biff Tannen's work. He remembered the nuclear waste plants Alternate Biff had built, and shivered. If this world was anything like that, he wasn't sure he could bear staying here, even for just a short period of time.

Doc carefully took the DeLorean up into the sky, and flew it towards the Courthouse Square. As the vehicle got closer, the streets became more crowded. In another detail reminiscent to 1985-A, drunken bums and rough bikers roamed the streets. Chalk outlines were clearly visible on several places. Doc grimaced. To think anyone could do this simply by misusing his time machine. It almost made him regret not abandoning time travel altogether when he'd still had the chance.

When the car finally entered the square, Doc found himself flabbergasted. The entire layout had been altered – where the Courthouse, including the park in front of it, had been, was now an enormous complex which was two times as long and wide as the Courthouse had been (including part of where the pond had been located in the 'real' 2016) and up to six times as high. All business seemed to be gravitated on this point, although those businesses did not mean much more than the shops that had been in Biff's 1985 – sex shops, nuclear waste centers, and surprisingly, a café on the location of the Café 80s, called 'Grand Café'. As Doc turned back to the giant complex, he saw there was something written at the top: "Courthouse for the city of Tannen Valley". As if that hadn't been obvious already…

"Tannen Valley?"

Doc turned back, disbelieving his eyes. Sure enough, the sign read 'Tannen Valley', clear as day. "Great Scott!" the inventor exclaimed. "What in the name of Sir Isaac H. Newton… how…"

Well, there was no point in being stunned at all this now. He willed himself to stay focused and landed the car at the side of the road, careful to stay out of the 'No Landing' zones, one aspect of the old Hill Valley that had not been changed. When he got out, Doc immediately frowned and took a step back – it had been one thing to notice a strange smell back at the car shop, but it was another to notice it inside the center of Hill Valley. The scent was, though not as overwhelming as in Biff's reality, definitely bad.

Doc shook his head, locked the DeLorean, and walked over to the phone booth he had seen on the end of the street. He didn't recall seeing any in the Square in the previous 2016, but maybe technological progress was running a little behind on that front in this world. Upon entering, he found to his relief that it worked similar to any future phone he had seen thus far. At least something was going easy. "Marty – er, correction, Mar_tin_ McFly, please" he told the video screen, not sure if he should search using Marty's common or his official name.

The machine only took two seconds to search through the Hill Valley, no, _Tannen _Valley archives, and then emitted an unpleasant beep. "No McFly, Martin found in the area of Tannen Valley" it told him. "Please modify your search."

Doc was stunned. Why was Marty not around? Had he fled town, from whatever had happened? By now it had become obvious to him that the Tannens had once again been favored in this alternate history, leading him to the conclusion that Biff Tannen, or perhaps Cliff or Griff, had stolen the train. If the Tannens really were in charge, Doc did not blame the alternate George and Lorraine one bit for moving to another place with their kids.

He had barely finished that thought when he felt an all-too-familiar thrust into his back – the barrel of a gun. He immediately raised his hands. "Who… what…" he stammered.

"Why, hello." Two men dressed in police uniforms leaned over his shoulders and smiled at him before dragging him out of the phone booth and handcuffing him. "Excuse me, sir, but the Tannen Valley authorities have deemed that you possess a risk to society. Would you mind coming with us to prison?"

Doc frowned, surprised. "You're _asking _me?" he said, incredulously.

"Why, of course" the second police officer said. "Wouldn't it be nice if you just behaved like any other cooperative subject? It's in your own interest that you are removed from town, after all."

Doc looked at them with disgust, while frantically thinking about what to do. He'd never been one for getting away from armed people – though he had outsmarted others sometimes, those others had rarely ever directly confronted him like now. Put under immense pressure, he could only think of one solution, the one his best friend had always used. "All right, all right… wait, what's that?" he yelled, pointing behind them.

To his relief, all three of the officers fell for it – or at least temporarily. Doc had barely set the first steps towards running away when the first officer looked around, saw what was happening, and tripped him. The inventor stumbled and fell to the ground. After rapidly examining his own wounds (for as far as he could do that while he was lying down) he started to climb up again, but one decisive whack of a gun against the back of his skull brought a change of plans. Doc fell down again, losing consciousness.

oooooooo

In the end, Dr. Emmett Brown didn't know just how much time had passed while he got locked up in what appeared to be a prison cell. While being transported, he had woken up several times, but each time a dose of chloroform had brought him back to sleep. By the point he finally woke up naturally, he guessed that it had to be the morning of the next day.

Doc stretched, and tried to sit up, immediately finding that he couldn't move much. His arms were chained to the sides of the bed he was on, and his feet were connected to the front with another part of rope. After a few attempts at getting up, the inventor got frustrated. "Hey!" he called out.

A man's face peeked through the small hole in the door that separated his cell from the rest of the building. "Ah" he said. "The new one's making trouble, huh? Don't worry pal, within a few days, being chained to your bed is the least you'll be worried about."

Doc narrowed his eyes with anger. "Let me out of here!" he exclaimed, knowing very well the futility of his request but making it anyway. "What did I do to get locked up, anyway?"

"Don't ask me" the guard replied. "That's the leader's job. And I don't talk to him everyday."

Doc frowned. "The leader?"

"The leader of Tannen Valley, yeah" the guard said, rolling his eyes. "Cliff Tannen. Don't you know?"

"Cliff Tannen rules this town?" Doc asked. "Great Scott, that explains a lot…"

The guard shrugged. "If you say so" he sneered. "Anyone around here knows Cliff has been in charge since his father retired in 2008. The Tannens have been running the city since before it was renamed." He looked at Doc up and down. "Though I guess you'd still remember that time. How old are you, anyway?"

"None of your business" Doc snarled. "Is there any way I can speak to, um, _Mister _Tannen?"

The guard laughed. "If we'd let every prisoner talk to the leader, he would be dead by now. And we can't have that, can we?"

"Suppose not" Doc muttered. He tried to lie back, noticing once more the restrictions his current position posed. "When are you letting me out of this, anyway?"

"The cell, or the chains?"

"Preferably the cell, but the chains are okay for now" Doc said, tugging on them. It was no use – they were strapped tight around his feet and arms. He could barely move them more than a few inches.

The guard shrugged. "Depends on whether you behave" he said. "If you are nice and quiet and do what you're told, your chains might come off at breakfast time and you won't be sealed again until the evening. If you're not, though, you can expect to be tied up for the rest of the day."

Doc groaned. "Well, if I can't talk to Cliff, can't you at least ask him or anyone else what I've done wrong?" he asked. "I can't say I like getting locked up at all, but when they don't even tell me what I've done…"

"Does it matter that much to you?" the guard said, smirking. "Mr. Tannen himself ordered the warrant for your arrest, so obviously you've done something bad. Why should it matter just _what_ it is?"

"Because if I knew what I were accused of, I could try to disprove Mr. Tannen's evidence" Doc said. He felt like he was talking to a silly little child. How on earth did the Tannens select these guards?

The guard frowned. "Now you've really lost it, old man" he informed the inventor. "As if the Tannens could _ever _be wrong. Even others your age – whatever that might be – would know better. Have you been living under a rock for the past sixty or seventy years?"

Doc felt stunned. It sounded like the guard had been more or less brainwashed. Of course, if that was the case, it would be of little use to talk to him, and it wouldn't get him any closer to Cliff – or to Marty, for that matter. He leaned back. "Never mind" he muttered, quietly.

The guard looked at him and shrugged. "Amuse yourself" he said, walking off down the hallway. Doc sighed, and leaned back into his pillow. He was locked up by a Tannen in an alternate reality, and he had no clue whether he'd ever see his wife and kids again. How much more pain could he suffer? He felt tears coming up, but willed them down – since he was tied up, he couldn't wipe them away, and he didn't think the guard would give him a handkerchief if he asked.

Eventually, he had to have fallen asleep. He had no idea how long it lasted – there was little to no light in here, and there were no windows. He might as well be underground. He knew he had had at least one watch on his arm, but it had been taken away from him along with his wedding ring and all valuable items he carried on him – he couldn't reach for his wallet due to being tied up, but he suspected it was gone as well – and he had no idea where they had taken them. It made him feel even more depressed, that his obsession with time was being disturbed by the fact that he had no clue of where he was and what time it could be.

After an unknown period of time, Doc was woken up again to the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. He wondered whether it was the guard, but from what he'd seen and heard earlier, he had had the impression the man was supposed to guard just the hallway bordering his cell and would thus probably be already down here. He found that was true later, when he could faintly hear a strangely familiar voice in the hallway, and the guard responding to it.

"Pardon me, sir, but I really can't do that. I was given explicit orders to…"

"Then you'll just have to ignore them!" That was the stranger's voice, loud, authoritative, and yet familiar on some levels. "You know who I am, don't you?"

"Of course, sir." Doc noticed the difference between the way the guard had spoken with him and the subservient way he was speaking to the stranger. "But your brother…"

"Forget him" the stranger said. "I know he means well, but this is my area. I have the authority to arrest and set free, and just because I'm away to Sacramento, that doesn't mean Cliff can just take over from me."

"But sir…"

"Shut up, man, you look like a fool" the stranger grumbled. "Are you going to let me through, or should I imprison _you_ for disobeying orders?"

"No, sir!" The guard sounded terrified by now. "I'm sorry, sir. Here you go."

"Good." The footsteps came closer, and Doc looked up as he heard the guard sticking keys in the lock of his door. Were they setting him free? Somehow, he doubted that. But what else could the stranger want from him?

The door swung open. Doc lifted his head as much as he could, and stared towards the open doorway. He immediately gasped.

Standing there next to the guard was Marty McFly. Granted, it was a Marty who wore a grey suit, luxury shoes, dark blue pants, and an aura of authority that he had never possessed in the old timeline, but it was him nevertheless. Although… he _was_ different. As Doc squinted closer, he saw the now forty-seven-year-old had his hair combed in an unfamiliar way, and the look in his eyes was very un-Marty-like.

"That's him, huh?" Marty said, looking back at Doc. "They were right, the similarity is stunning. If I hadn't been at the funeral myself, I would have sworn it was him." He turned to the guard. "Untie his hands."

The guard frowned. "But sir, I'm not sure… I mean, regarding your safety…"

"What is it, man, do you _want _to get thrown in jail?!" Marty exclaimed. "I can take care of myself! Untie him, NOW! And then _scram_!"

The guard's face went pale, and Doc couldn't suppress a smile as he saw his previous tormentor like this. His hands were untied rapidly, and then the guard threw the keys to Marty, shut the door behind him, and ran off. Doc painfully sat up, and he and Marty both looked at the door for a moment, waiting until the footsteps were gone.

"So" Marty said, staring at Doc. "You're the miscreant my brother's goons arrested yesterday."

"Marty," Doc said, relieved at seeing his friend, "I…"

"Excuse me," Marty interrupted, "I can't recall giving you permission to talk. So don't."

"What?" Doc asked, stunned.

"And besides," Marty continued, "I didn't give you permission to call me by my first name either. You're the prisoner, I'm the police chief. So, kindly address me as you should."

"And by what name might that be?" Doc asked.

Marty raised an eyebrow. "I would have thought you'd know that" he said. "To you, I'm _Mister_ Tannen. That's Martin David Tannen, in full." He smiled, as Doc let out a gasp.

"Son of Biff Tannen and Lorraine Baines."


	6. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: I've been away from this site for a while. My life has presumably changed in some minor ways. However, I still don't own BTTF.**

_Author's Note:_ _At last, at last I am settling down for a somewhat regular continuation of this fic, by which I mean that I'm going to try to update much more often from now on. Not sure how well I'll keep that promise because I do tend to be scatterbrained, but I'll try. I wanted to upload this chapter in the time of year it takes place, so depending on your time zone, it is either June 5th or June 6th when this story is updated. It continues on from the shocker that ended the last chapter, and provides some insights into Alternate Marty. Everyone who likes seeing Doc and Marty interact should like this chapter. I hope. Anyway, please read and review!_

**Chapter Five**

**Monday, June 6, 2016  
>10:30 AM PDT<br>Tannen Valley, California**

In one moment, Doc felt like he'd been slapped in the face, kicked in the groin, and hit over the head all at the same time. He couldn't speak for a few moments, and simply stared at Marty. When he finally spoke, it was in a near-whisper: "Uh, uh, _biological_ son?"

Marty frowned. "Yes, naturally" he replied. "My parents met in 1955, and I was born thirteen years later. I have no reason to believe I'm not their biological child." His eyes narrowed. "Why do you ask?"

Doc felt tempted to say 'because the last time you were Biff's son, you were adopted after he had shot your father in 1973', but at the last moment, he decided not to. It was obvious this Marty had never heard of time travel. If Marty was a Tannen in this new world, then he had probably never even met the inventor in the first place. Although, as he now recalled, Marty had said something to the guard about him bearing a resemblance to someone…

"Never mind" he finally replied. "I was wondering… do you know me?"

Marty shrugged. "No" he said. "In fact, that was part of a series of questions I was going to ask you. What is your name?"

Doc was startled despite himself and wondered what he could tell his friend's counterpart, but eventually figured he had nothing to lose by being honest – and this Marty _was_ his only hope after all, even if he was part-Tannen. "I'm Emmett Brown, uh, sir."

Marty smirked. "Emmett Brown?" he asked. "He died a long time ago, and he didn't look anything like you. I should know, I dated his granddaughter for a while."

"Granddaughter?" Doc repeated, stunned. "I don't have… what's her name?"

"Anna Brown" Marty replied. "She's two years younger than I am. Daughter of Erhardt Brown, granddaughter of Emmett Brown." He smirked. "You know, if anything, I was thinking you looked like an_ other_ Emmett – my granduncle."

"You have a granduncle named Emmett?" Doc whispered. "On your father's side, I presume."

"That's correct" Marty replied. "Emmett Tannen. He looked just like you, but he died several years ago. I believe it was in 2006."

Doc leaned against the wall, groaning. No matter which Emmett was him, he was now truly dead in this timeline. At least 2006 was still in his future. "Um… would you mind telling me why you came here?" he asked.

Marty stared at him, then started pacing up and down the room. "I came here because I heard my brother, Cliff, had sent out several of his goons to arrest a stranger in the square. Not only was that _my_ responsibility, he also didn't give me a clear answer on just why you were arrested. But the guard tells me you don't know either, do you?"

Doc nodded. "I was just entering a phone booth when those… those officers arrested me. I didn't do anything wrong."

"That's a new one" Marty muttered, sitting down again. "Usually prisoners will just agree that they were at fault right away. You present us with a _challenge_. All right then, let me try to find out why you were arrested. What were you doing in that phone booth?"

"I, uh, was trying to look someone up" Doc said, nervously. He wasn't sure whether he wanted to talk about that with _this_ version of Marty…

"Who?"

Well, that hadn't worked. Perhaps it _would_ be better to be honest – it wasn't like things could get any worse. "I was looking for you" he said.

"Me?" Marty's blue eyes blinked. Though that aspect had stayed the same, Doc could now see there were some differences with his young friend – for one, he was taller, looking more like five foot six or seven instead of five foot four. His face reminded Doc also slightly more of a Tannen, although it was still clearly and recognizably Marty. Despite the changes that had occurred, Doc found himself being amazed at the power the self-preservation effect possessed, making Marty's father change and different life give his appearances only the slightest of possible adjustments.

"Yes, you" he replied. "Marty, er, Mister Tannen… I needed your help."

"Why?" Marty asked. "Were you victim of a crime?"

Emmett shook his head. "No… it's much more complicated than that." He looked at Marty. "This is going to be impossible to believe and I wish I had proof on me to show you, but here goes. I am Doctor Emmett L. Brown. I'm from an alternate timeline, a world where the Tannen family never came to power in Hill Valley. You were my friend in that world, and you were the son of George McFly, not Biff Tannen. I'm from the year 1985, or actually from 1895 now but that would be a little complicated to explain, and when I travelled with my family to 2016, the time machine was stolen and they were kidnapped. Shortly thereafter, the world changed into this reality, and I got arrested by your brother's goons when I tried to look for you."

Marty looked at him, and smirked. "You're right – it is impossible to believe. But it is one of the most original tales any prisoner I've met has come up with. Congratulations on that."

Emmett sighed, deeply. "What can I say to make you believe me?" he asked. "I know it's hard, but I've always taught you – the other you – to keep an open mind."

"I have an open mind" Marty replied. "Open to reasonable suggestions, at least. Not to time travelling nonsense." He frowned. "I suppose I was wrong about you. I thought you were a sane, rational person my brother had accidentally arrested. I now think that was a mistake – or at least, the sane, rational part was."

"Marty, please" Emmett said. "If you'll just listen…"

"You start by calling me 'Mister Tannen'" Marty said. "Is that so hard to do?"

"Considering the fact that I know you as my friend and assistant, yes" Emmett replied. "All right, mister Tannen, let me ask you a question… do I really look like I'm insane?"

Marty frowned. "I don't think I should answer that question."

Emmett grimaced. "Fine, maybe I'm not exactly a regular person" he admitted. "But that doesn't mean I am crazy. And I meant to say…" He sighed. "I wish there was any other way than talking to you, but there is none, and I'm tied up so I can't show you any proof."

"Proof?" Marty smirked. "Then what proof were you going to show me?"

"Well, there _should _be some evidence" Emmett replied. "After all, I've lived in the Nineteenth Century for ten years. There ought to be some leftovers from that, even despite my care to avoid messing with history." He looked up at Marty. "Unless history got changed before that, of course."

"Of course" Marty said. It was clear he was humoring the inventor.

Emmett looked at his non-friend. "Look, why don't you start telling me something about this world, first? I know there's a lot different, but I'm still not sure what exactly happened to cause it. Besides it having something to do with Old Biff Tannen."

"My father?" Marty blinked. "He's not old. Well, I suppose he is seventy-eight now, but that gives you no right to call him old. Certainly not since you're a mere prisoner." His eyes narrowed. "One piece of advice for you – don't _ever _show disrespect for a Tannen family member again. Or we might have to take you to a more… intense prison."

Emmett stared at Marty. "Sorry" he replied, softly.

"What was that?"

"Sorry" Emmett repeated, louder. "Now, mister Tannen, could you please tell me about your family history?"

Marty smirked. "You're a quick learner" he said. "Most miscreants don't learn to behave until they have gotten some serious whipping." He looked at Emmett. "Our family started in the Old West, with Buford Tannen. He came to what was then Hill Valley in 1878, and almost immediately started his reputation as the fastest gun in the west. He was beaten by that no-good rioter Clint Eastwood in an unfair fight, though, and as a result, the police force was able to imprison him."

"I know" Emmett said, not able to keep himself from smiling. "I was there. As a matter of fact, Clint Eastwood was the other you."

Marty grinned. "You've got a big imagination" he informed him. "Does that tie in with that stuff about how you lived in the Old West for a decade?"

"Yes, it does" Emmett replied, before telling in detail the story of how he had gotten trapped in 1885 and had married Clara Clayton and fathered Jules and Verne with her. As he was speaking, he noticed that Marty was not an inch closer to believing him, but he seemed to be amused by the story and keeping him friendly counted for a lot as well. It took a while before he got Marty back on the story about his own family.

Apparently Buford's son, his great-grandfather, was Driff Tannen. He had "managed to outsmart the Prohibition laws of the 1920s" as Marty said it and had two sons: Marty's grandfather, Miff, and later the intriguing look-alike – Emmett Tannen.

Emmett frowned when his non-friend reached that part. "Interesting" he replied. "When was your granduncle born?"

"How should I know?" Marty said. "I don't know when my entire family was born. I believe it was around 1920, though. And we used to celebrate his birthday in the spring. Early spring, in fact, because it often snowed."

"March twenty-third, perhaps?" Doc guessed. Marty nodded. "That's _my_ birthday. But what was going on with the snow?"

Marty shrugged. "Must have been another overload of our toxic waste plants" he replied. "I guess I'm a little more traditional than Cliff on that point – I prefer the old-fashioned sunsets and bright sky over the orange streaks in it he tolerates due to the dumping of toxic waste. He's right that I'm too sensitive for my own good, but whenever Mom tells me of the sunrises in her youth that weren't spoiled by pollution…" He looked at Doc. "I shouldn't be discussing this with you. Why am I doing this, anyway?"

"Beats me" Doc responded. "Perhaps you feel that we're supposed to be friends?"

The forty-seven-year-old grinned. "That's just silly" he said. "Your story about our supposed friendship doesn't consist of anything but fantasy." He sighed, and looked at the inventor with something that resembled sympathy. "I know it's hard to remember the truth, but we're here to help you, right? I'll talk to my brother, and see if he can get you a place on the medical ward."

Doc gasped, horrified. "You…" he began. "You seriously think there is something mentally wrong with me?"

Marty nodded. "I do, because there is" he replied. "I understand it's hard for you to acknowledge it, but just take a deep breath and relax." He smiled. "You will be cured. I will plead by my brother for it. We cannot put a mentally ill prisoner in an ordinary cell like this." He stood up, and walked towards the door.

Doc's eyes went wide. "Now, wait" he said. "Can you…"

"Never mind" Marty replied. "I've heard what I wanted to hear. Perhaps you'll have the honor of seeing me again, but until then, I suppose you'll just have to be content with your memories. Guard!"

Marty opened the door just as the guard rushed into the scene. "Make sure that Mr. Whatever his name is is treated well. Don't chain his arms again, but make sure he won't get a chance to get away. He's mentally ill."

The guard frowned. "But sir, shouldn't we…"

"NO BUTS!" Marty shouted. "I've only seen you a couple of times thus far, but I think I'm beginning to dislike you. Haven't you been learned to do as you're told?"

The guard shivered. "Uh, yes sir, but your orders tend to go against those of the leader."

"I know my brother's in charge of this town," Marty replied, "but I'm in charge of the police force. Disobey me once more and you're fired. Now get to your work."

The guard saluted. "Yes sir!"

"That's more like it" Marty said, smiling. "See? You lowly non-Tannens _can_ behave if you want to."

Doc sighed, as the door was shut behind him. A few seconds later, he could hear Marty walking back up on the stairs, his footsteps dimming until they were just a hollow, faint noise. He grimaced. This interview had not exactly been what he had expected of it. Sure, he hadn't counted on Marty believing much of his story, but to call him crazy?

He sighed. Getting called crazy stung, especially if it was by a version of his best friend. And though he knew Marty hadn't meant it derogatorily, that might make it even worse. If his friend really thought that he was insane… well, that didn't promise much good for the future. Emmett shook his head as he leaned back into the pillow, and tried to fall asleep again. It wasn't like there was anything better to do.


	7. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: I don't own Back to the Future. **

_Author's Note: All right, another chapter, with some fresh exposition that will reveal some stuff that happened in the past of this timeline while keeping some details concealed. Basically, stuff happens. Please read and review.  
><em>

**Chapter Six**

**Monday, June 6, 2016  
>11:30 AM PDT<br>Tannen Valley, California**

The office of Cliff Tannen, leader of Tannen Valley, head of the Tannen family, master of wisdom and fighter for justice, was not a place any Tannen Valley citizen dared to visit every day. In fact, almost nobody went there, knowing that their leader hated to be disturbed. Cliff spent most of the day working for the city, or so the official story went, and that was why no one was permitted to see him. Part of that was also because there were no official reasons that any citizen of Tannen Valley should want to visit Cliff – praise could be passed on, after all, and complaints were not allowed. Anyone who ever so slightly criticized the Tannen regime could be sure measures would be taken against him or her.

Of course, there were also those among Cliff's inner circle, those who did get a chance to see their leader every day, perhaps more often than they would have wanted. They were the people that knew Cliff spent more time hanging around with showgirls and gambling than he spent on his work. Those people were mostly privileged, being as well-off as one could be in Tannen Valley, and therefore, they rarely criticized Cliff's decisions. At least, that description applied to all but one person: Cliff's very own brother, Marty Tannen.

From the desk he was sitting behind, Cliff let out a groan as he thought of his younger brother. Martin David Tannen was a member of the family, and usually worked in accordance with the family's wishes, but that was about it. Just like his granduncle, the late Emmett Tannen, he had his problems with the loyalty to his family when it came to the more extreme measures. And Cliff figured he shouldn't have been surprised to learn that those measures included the imprisonment of alternate Emmett Brown.

Cliff sighed. He could still remember the day his father had told him about the visit their family had received from the future. Biff Tannen from 2016 had come to Hill Valley a century earlier and had given the Tannens information – and the younger version of a certain inventor – with which they could start their rise to power. It hadn't been easy to get there, his father used to tell, but it had worked out in the end.

In 1952, Emmett Tannen – formerly Brown, though he had no clue about that – had perfected the mind influencing machine. With it, the Tannen family had had power at their disposal they had never thought was possible. His great-grandfather Driff, who had avoided the car accident that ended his life in the original timeline, had used the machine to influence important people in town. The mind influencer had worked gradually, but eventually, the town had been brought more and more under Tannen control. In 1955, his father had met his mother after getting hit by her father's car – another detail his father's older self had passed on. They had used the mind influencer on Lorraine, who had been reluctant to date Biff at first. However, after a week, she'd been begging him to love her at the dance, vowing to do everything for him. Cliff smirked evilly.

While the mind influencer had been used on Tannen spouses (like his own) it had never been used on Tannens themselves, which was part of why Marty, his younger brother and the only rival he had for power after his father retired, had become such a pest. The boy had too much of his mother's genes – interested in wealth and power, but still too attached to silly morals. That was one of the reasons Marty had never been let in on the family secret. Cliff had wanted to use the mind influencer on him anyhow, but his father had always forbidden that. The leader had thus been forced to hope his brother would mature with age, forgetting his silly predispositions. He hadn't, and right now, forty-seven-year-old Marty was still troublesome.

Which he showed by barging into Cliff's office that very moment.

Marty walked up to the desk, ignoring the guards Cliff had placed on both side of the doors. "We need to talk" he said, softly.

Cliff frowned before showing his best fake smile. "If it's about the issue with the tramp we arrested in the square, I believe we've talked about that already." He tried to keep an optimistic impression, but inside he was seething. They had made sure Marty was out of town the day Old Biff Tannen had told them he had originally gone back. Their plan had been a partial success, as they had been able to track down alternate Emmett very easy. But now, Marty was giving them trouble after all. As usual.

"I know we have" Marty replied. "But we haven't enough. I spoke to him this morning, and found out he's insane. He kept talking about time machines."

"So?" Cliff asked. "That sounds like a good reason to lock him up anyway. You wouldn't want someone like that running around Tannen Valley, would you?"

"No… but we can't keep him in a prison cell either" Marty replied. "The guy needs help, Cliff. I don't know what's wrong with him, but he appears to be a nice enough person. We have a duty to help people like him back on the road to obedience, justice and order. And putting him in a regular prison cell isn't going to help one bit for that. What else do we have a medical ward for?"

Cliff groaned. He didn't want to put Brown in a medical facility – according to the stories-from-the-other-world, he had been bothering the Tannen family for years. He deserved punishment. However, he couldn't tell Marty that, so he had to come up with something else. "It's too expensive" he said. "Do you know how much it would cost us if we sent every tramp who's got a little too much alcohol to the medical ward? That's not what Dad and Grandpa started the Tannen empire for!"

Marty rolled his eyes. "Then what did we start this empire for?" he asked. "We have a reputation in town. Our family is widely hailed as those who brought progress to Tannen Valley. Grandpa was the one who predicted all those future events. He used his gifts for good, didn't he? Then so should we!"

Cliff groaned again. One drawback from not letting Marty know just how the Tannen reforms were affecting the city was that he was able to use the nonsense he was fed as an argument, and Cliff could not respond with a good comeback. "Whatever" he muttered. "Look, why don't you go now, and we can talk about this later. I've got a busy day."

Marty rolled his eyes. "Yeah, right" he said. "I've got just the town police to run, and I do more than you do, Cliff – and that's while you're the supposed leader of the entire city."

"Are you just going to keep insulting me, or have you got anything else to say?" Cliff asked.

Marty sighed. "I know you mean well, Cliff, but sometimes, I think it's a little hard to see" he replied. "Fine, you do what you want to. But this isn't the last conversation we've had about this."

"We could always ask Mom what she thinks" Cliff suggested. "If you want an arbitrary decision…"

Marty shook his head. "We probably shouldn't bother her or Dad for little things like this – they're happy together away from the insanity of running the town. Besides, she'll rule in your favor anyway. She always does."

Cliff smirked. If only Marty knew just why he appeared to be his mother's favorite. "That's not true" he retorted. "When we were discussing how to celebrate Christmas last year, we asked Mom, and you won out."

Marty smiled faintly. "As if that was in any way important" he said. "But I guess this isn't either. Anyway, I've got to go to work. See you later."

"See you" Cliff responded. His brother walked down the path towards the door and left the room. The sound of the door shutting echoed through the hallways for a few moments as he did so. Cliff looked after him, then shook his head and retrieved the bottle of whiskey from underneath his papers. Now he could at last return to what was truly important in life.

oooooooo

"Mr. Brown? Wake up!"

The sound of an unfamiliar voice calling his name was enough to bring Emmett from deep sleep into at least mediocre alertness. He opened his eyes, which wasn't that hard (he had been getting too much sleep here anyway, not that there was anything better to do) and looked at the caller. "Who are you?"

A man in a security guard uniform grinned at him. "Please to meet you, Mr. Brown" he said. "I'm a member of the inside resistance against Tannen's regime. We heard someone was locked up innocently – even more innocently than usual, at least – and since we had been planning an operation against the regime anyway, we decided to break you out." He smirked. "Can't leave them thinking they are safe in their little offices, can we?"

"No, I guess you can't" Emmett mumbled. He tried to sit up, but found that he was still confined by his chains. "Who are you guys?" he asked.

"We're the resistance against the Tannen family, as I said" the man said. "You should have heard of us – we've got a rather big operation throughout Tannen Valley. But I ensure you we're not as bad as the Tannen family claims we are – although seeing you've been imprisoned by them, I doubt you have any reason to believe them in anything."

"That's right" Emmett replied, wondering whether or not to mention Marty – while this Marty might not be his friend, Emmett was still reluctant to count him as one of the 'evil Tannens'. "Could you please loosen my chains? It's getting rather annoying to have to talk to you this way."

"Of course, Mr. Brown" the man said. "We are going to rescue you. That's what I told you, didn't I?" He undid the chains on Emmett's arms and then also loosened the ones chaining his legs, which hadn't been loose for over a day – or at least, he presumed it had been a day. It felt very odd to have his legs free to move again. Cautiously, he put his feet on the ground next to the bed. After he'd adjusted a bit, he looked up at the man. "One question, though - how are you going to get me past all those guards? I haven't seen much of the facilities here, but I doubt the guard that walked around here yesterday is the only one."

The man smirked. "Oh, don't worry" he said. "We don't plan for you to get past those guards."

"Why not?"

His question was answered by a deafening explosion just several yards away. Emmett covered his ears and didn't look up until the noise had faded. When he did, he noticed the wall looked less stabile than it had before. He stared at the resistance member, who looked annoyed.

"That's too bad" the man commented. "We'd hoped this wall would be broken by the explosion, too. Well, I guess we'll just have to use the pickaxes." He took a pickaxe out of a case he'd been carrying, and started hitting the wall with it. Emmett, too stunned to do anything, resigned himself to simply staring as the unknown man did the work.

It took the stranger just about a minute to break through the wall, after some help from the other side. He took Emmett's hand and guided the dumb-founded inventor through walls of other cells, scattered with debris. The amount of stones and dust got more as they neared the explosion site, and suddenly, they stood in the last room before the outside, and were exposed to daylight.

Emmett squinted. He hadn't seen such fierce light in… well, at least a day. He looked at the man, reluctant. Instead of reassuring the inventor, the man simply continued pulling him outside, holding a firm grip on his arm. Emmett nearly stumbled a few times as he tried to adjust to the sudden light. It was all around him, making him unable to see much.

He had been pulled through at least six hundred feet of land when the man holding his arm suddenly came to a halt. "Here's the Tannens' prisoner, miss" he said, with the same kind of obedience Emmett had heard from the guard when Marty had visited him.

"Very good" a woman's voice sounded. Emmett squinted to get a closer look at her. It wasn't very easy, since the light was _still_ blinding him, but after a few moments, the world stabilized and he managed to get a grasp of whom he was facing. Then, he gasped.

"Jennifer Parker?"

That did it, now this world was truly messed up.


	8. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: I don't own Back to the Future. **

_Author's Note: All right, new chapter. Stuff happens. Please read and review.  
><em>

**Chapter Seven**

**Tuesday, June 7, 2016  
>06:10 AM PDT<br>Tannen Valley, California**

The woman who had been supposed to become Marty's wife but was now apparently some strange kind of resistance leader stared at Emmett. "Good to see you've heard of me, at least" she said. "But I would expect a little more politeness from someone who's just been rescued from near-certain death in the Tannen prisons."

"Near-certain death?" Emmett stammered. "I was under the impression they were just holding me prisoner in their cells. The situation wasn't great, but I don't think I was going to die any time soon."

Jennifer smirked. "Ah, the naivety of those who have barely set foot into that mockery of a home for opponents of the regime. You're right – you wouldn't die right away. I can assure you that a long, drawn-out death isn't much better, though. Most prisoners get tortured every once in a while, get too little food. They keep you alive but only just barely, toying with you like a cat with its prey while you're on the verge of dying. You can use up your reserves in there efficiently, but when you've lost them… you'll die eventually. It's a slow process, which gives them the excuse to attribute it to 'natural causes' and 'accidents', but you'll die eventually."

Emmett gasped. "Still, I don't think that would have happened to me" he insisted. "The food amount I got wasn't perfect, but it wasn't extremely little. And I hadn't been brought to a torture cell… yet."

"Well, then I can only say I'm glad you haven't found out the true extent of the Tannen horrors" Jennifer replied. "Come with me. I'll let you accompany me on the ride to our shelters – I can imagine you've got a lot to ask me, and I have a few questions for you, too."

"Such as why I was arrested in the first place?" Emmett asked. He was beginning to get an idea of that but he felt reluctant to tell Jennifer, especially this radically alternate version of her.

"That would be one of the questions I had in mind" Jennifer responded. "But we'll see about that later."

Emmett nodded reluctantly, and followed his friend's former wife into a relatively small limousine. Though it wasn't big, the limousine still had a lot of the decadence style that was associated with most of them – a television player, a small refrigerator, and even a small display with a keypad that Emmett managed to identify as a future computer from his previous visits to the 2010s.

"Surprising luxury for someone who runs a resistance movement" he told Jennifer once he'd sat down on his seat. "How long has your movement been around, anyway?"

Jennifer seemed startled by his sudden questions. "We've been protesting Tannen's rule since 1997" she replied. "That no-good family has been running the town since before I was born, and those citizens that didn't want to listen to their propaganda eventually got fed up with them. We recruit citizens with potential from all over Tannen Valley, explain to them what the Tannens have done, try to shake them out of their brainwashing, so to speak, and if they understand what's going on and want to help, they become members of our movement. If they don't – well, we certainly can't release them, so we mostly imprison them, and some of the more radical opponents of our movements have to be disposed of in… other ways."

"You execute them?" Emmett said, gasping.

Jennifer's mood turned dark. "It's either to kill or be killed these days in Tannen Valley" she replied. "We cannot spare mercy for people who are liable to tell the Tannen family exactly where we're hiding and what we're planning as soon as we release them. It's not a nice solution, but what else can we do?"

"Nothing, I suppose" Emmett muttered. This reality had degraded so much more into anarchy and chaos than he'd first expected. All in all, it only strengthened his resolve to fix history as soon as possible. "Listen, um, miss Parker." He hesitated. "Is it miss or Mrs.?"

"Mrs." Jennifer replied. "I've kept my maiden name to avoid being associated with my husband – it would only get him in trouble with the Tannens."

"Your husband" Emmett said. "Who, if I might ask, would that be?"

"You may not ask" Jennifer said, smirking slightly. "I can't just tell everybody who I'm married to. For all I know, you could be a Tannen spy who was imprisoned for no good reason just because they knew we were going to plan an operation soon anyway and wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to rescue you."

Emmett smiled. "You're a smart woman" he complimented her. "Very well then, I'll address you as Mrs. Parker for now. But anyway… I need your help."

"You've already got my help" Jennifer pointed out. "If I hadn't been alerted by the local delegation of our spy network that there was someone imprisoned, I wouldn't have attempted to get you out." She shrugged. "I might not have done that anyway – can't rescue everyone the Tannens arrest. But our spies had never seen you before, and they heard the guards that arrested you admitting they didn't know what you had done. This of course still didn't make them question why you were arrested." She scowled. "I figured liberating you, a clearly innocent prisoner, was as good a statement to make as any."

"Thank you for that" Emmett replied.

"You're welcome" Jennifer said. "But if you are really grateful, I'd like to ask you what we ask every prisoner we rescue: would you like to join our organization? If you do, it's a good way to get back at those who threw you in jail. But you'll have to be courageous, because if you're caught again, you won't escape so easily."

"What are you planning to do if I say no?" Emmett asked.

Jennifer raised an eyebrow. "Why would you do that? I thought you would say yes for sure." She smirked. "Anyway, I'll be honest with you – if you do say no, you'll be brought to a yet undetermined place far outside of the civilized world where you'll be left to continue your life."

"After you take everything useful I've got on me as a reward for your services?" Emmett asked.

"You are a very good guesser, Mr. Brown" Jennifer said, smiling. "But is that really the fate you want for yourself? Wouldn't you much rather stay and help our cause?"

"Perhaps" Emmett allowed. "But I think I've got a better way to do that than most of you. In fact, what I've got in mind will enable you to remove the Tannens' rule for once and for all."

Jennifer frowned. "You're making me curious."

"And not without reason" Emmett replied. "But I'll explain once we get to Saville Avenue."

"What makes you think our journey will take us there, Mr. Brown?" Jennifer asked.

"I need to be there" Emmett simply replied. "And if you really want to end the grip the Tannens have on Hill Valley – yes, not Tannen Valley, _Hill_ Valley – then you should want me to go there as well."

oooooooo

Marty McFly was furious. And for a change, he was not furious with his brother, who usually got on his nerves at least three times a day with his attention for hookers and gambling. He was also not furious with his employees, although he knew he could at least slightly blame them for what had happened. No, this time he was mostly furious with himself.

He had left the cell of the prisoner they had named 'Brown' in their files for lack of anything better – the man kept insisting he was Emmett Brown, and even whatever ID had found on him had indicated that (although the dates made clear that they were all fakeries, with some supposedly dating from the Nineteenth Century) – in the conviction that "Emmett" would never get a chance to escape. That this man was a lunatic, crazy and completely out of his mind, but at the same time harmless. It was therefore that when he heard the prisoner _had_ escaped – albeit with help from the anti-Tannen group – he had been furious with himself first of all, for having been so naïve that he hadn't considered Brown a threat.

Well, he would make up for it now. He would make up for all of it.

And that was why he was currently driving personally towards the place the anti-Tannen group limousine had been last spotted. Certainly, he was accompanied by the usual group of policemen and aggressive bullies who didn't care whom they were beating up as long as they would get paid, but he usually wasn't with them. Marty had to admit it did unnerve him slightly to be surrounded by people like that, which made him linger at the office until the dirty work was done. This, though, this was personal.

Ah, well. At least they were going out for a good cause. The anti-Tannen group had been plaguing Tannen Valley for years now. Their leader, Jennifer Parker, could not be much older than he was (if she was older at all) but she had already built up a movement powerful enough to shake the core foundations of their city. Marty figured that on some accounts, his brother was right. They couldn't always go on with a soft approach, trying to convince members of the resistance to defect. They needed to strike hard and fast, so that Parker and her gang would never be a threat again.

And now, it was time to deliver the first blow in that strike.

The radio crackled to life. "Mr. Tannen?" a voice reported. "The rebels have been spotted. They are driving out of town, in the direction of Saville Avenue."

Marty smirked. At least their tracking satellites worked perfectly today. The rebel movement had been practically incapacitated before they found a way to deceive them, and even after that, they hadn't used their equipment against the Tannen-run satellites all the time – Marty didn't know why, but he guessed that it might be too hard for them to mess with all the satellites that were around, all the time. At least now, they weren't active, so the satellites were working without a glitch and could track down the location the ex-prisoner and his rescuers were to within about thousand feet distance.

Marty grinned. Now that they had tracked down the resistance group, all they had to do was capture them. Perhaps today, he would finally get rid of some of the nuisances that had been plaguing his police force for years. And even if that didn't work, it would still be worth it… as long as he got prisoner Brown back.


	9. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer: I don't own Back to the Future.  
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_Author's Note: Yes, yet another chapter. And we're getting somewhere, so that's important. Marty is figuring out that not all might be what it seems concerning prisoner Brown. Let's hope that he comes to the right conclusion before it's too late, right? And yes, the general theme is similar to the Game's, but I warned you about that, didn't I?_

**Chapter Eight**

**Tuesday, June 7, 2016  
>06:45 AM PDT<br>Outside of Tannen Valley, California**

"You know, this really doesn't look like much."

Emmett smirked at Jennifer. They were in the house he and his family lived in in the nineteenth Century. What had then been a comfortable house was now largely run down at best, a wreck at worst. But even if it had been a total ruin, Emmett knew that one thing would still be intact – his underground safe.

If only he knew where exactly it was.

He paced across the floor of the house, and nodded. "It doesn't" he admitted, trying to stall for time. "But I can assure you that once I'll find what I'm looking for, you will agree with me that this was an important trip to make."

Jennifer nodded thoughtfully. "I see" she replied. "And where, if I may ask, is that thing what you are looking for?"

"I'm… not sure" Emmett admitted, softly. "I'll find it, though. No matter what happens, I know I'll find it."

He winced, as he continued the search. Continuing to pace around, he tried to recall what exactly he was looking for.

The safe under the house was the only place he had for secret documents besides the garage. He had hidden it carefully under the living room floor, and it had a lock on it. Inside were several important files on time travel, as well as identification which described his past. He had hid it there in case something ever happened to him and Clara and the boys needed to get out of the 1880s, but it would serve this purpose just as well. All together, it would probably be enough to convince Jennifer who he was, and also enough to build a time machine. Of course, he would need to find a vehicle first, but once he had gotten the anti-Tannen resistance on his side, that shouldn't be a problem anymore.

But the only way to do that was to find the safe. And right now, he couldn't find it. Emmett let out a short curse under his breath, frustrated. His home in 1895 was radically different from the state it was in now. Inner walls had been demolished, and the ground floor consisted of only two rooms now. He'd made sure the ground was solid and the safe was at a small part of the room, so it would be a nearly impossible task to take apart every inch of ground to find that stupid safe. And he had no clue how many steps to take from the wall to find it. He had known that in 1895, but now the wall was gone. He could ask for a metal detector, but he presumed the resistance hadn't got one on them and wouldn't have the patience needed for one of them to go and get one.

"I have to find it" he muttered, under his breath. "I have to."

"Having little luck?" Jennifer inquired half-sarcastically. Emmett felt the urge to tell her to shut up, but resisted. She was the only one that could help him here, she and the group that supported her. But if they started to believe that he was kidding them – then there'd be heck to pay.

"I'll find it" he eventually replied.

"I can't really believe that anymore" Jennifer said. "It has been over ten minutes now, and you still haven't found that supposed safe of yours. I'm sorry, Mr. Brown, but I'm afraid your cover's blown."

Emmett looked up at her. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"That you are trying to guide us right into the hands of the Tannens" Jennifer responded, motioning for her guards to pull out a gun. "If not for this delay, we would be in our shelter by now. We would be safe. This is your trick to let us run into the hands of those no-good criminal leaders of our town."

Emmett paled visibly. "No, no, it's not!" he exclaimed. "Give me five more minutes, I _will_ find it!" To himself, he added: "Or rather, I must find it…"

Jennifer contemplated that request. "Maybe" she replied. "Or maybe not."

She turned to the guard. "Give him two minutes. If he hasn't found anything by then…"

Her sentence was cut off by the sound of gunfire outside. "Great Scott!" Emmett exclaimed.

Jennifer ran towards the window, then turned to Emmett with a fierce look on her face. "It's Marty Tannen" she growled. "You guided us into this!"

"I-I'm sorry!" Emmett called out. "I understand it will be hard to believe I am innocent under these strange circumstances, but you have to…"

His line was cut off as well as the door was broken open. Within a few seconds, the Tannen goons stood in the living room, guns firing. Jennifer and her gang pulled out their own guns and started firing back.

Emmett felt horrified. He needed to get out of this, as soon as possible. The sixty-five-year-old ducked and tried to make his way for the back door. He never got half of the way. One weak floorboard that had been shot off the ground by the sudden gunfire had just bent over enough to be an annoyance to the inventor. He tripped and fell to the ground. The sixty-five-year-old only caught a last glance of the familiar gleam coming from the spot part of the board had been on before he lost consciousness.

oooooooo

The fight between the Tannen and anti-Tannen groups lasted about as long as it did in any direct confrontation – until either side started to risk running out of bullets. Some members of both gangs ended up getting wounded, but neither sustained fatal wounds. In the end, though, Jennifer's group ran out of ammunition, and fled out of the house.

Marty immediately ordered his associates to go after them, 'to bring them to justice', as he put it, but he decided to stay in the house that had now been reduced to a ruin after the intense gunfire. There was still one man inside it, though – an unconscious Emmett Brown.

"Want me to shoot him now, sir?" his prime assistant asked. "Will be quick and painless, and efficient."

Marty shook his head. "No, can't really let the bastard get out of this without being hurt" he replied. "And no matter how much I hate him, he deserves a fair trial. He'll get another twenty-four hours before death."

"Fine, sir" his second assistant asked. "Drag him back to the prison, then?"

"While he's still out" Marty agreed, nodding. "Yeah, do that. I'll be with you shortly."

"Whatever you say, boss" his first assistant replied. They dragged the semi-inventor away. Marty sighed as he looked after them. He hadn't really thought this man was such a bad guy. Insane, yes, but in other ways, he was reasonable. Now that he had escaped from the Tannen prisons, though, and had associated himself with the Parker gang… Marty shook his head. Death was the only way to punish him now.

He was about to follow his subordinates when his eye fell on the board which had been twisted out of contortion and moved from its place after Emmett's fall. "Might as well replace it" he muttered to himself. If this was one of the resistance's lairs, it wouldn't help to have someone trip over it in a search for anything useful left in here. He pulled it out and was about to bend it over and put it back on its place, when he saw what was underneath it.

Clearly recognizable with an unmistakable knob and numbers around it was a safe. It was a small one, not comparable to those in his office – or in those of his brother, for that matter. But still, it was a safe. Marty frowned, kneeling down. He wondered what combinations he could think of to open it…

"Uh, sir?" his prime assistant asked. "Would you…"

"I'll be with you in a minute or two" Marty replied. "There's just something here I need to sort out." He gestured for his assistant to leave, which allowed him to focus on the safe again. Whose could it be? It looked too antique to belong to the resistance, especially with the spider webs and dust over it. Perhaps it belonged to the strange old man? Marty recalled he had spoken about documents and about living in the past. Did that mean…

He smirked, shaking it off. Surely that man couldn't own a safe. He was crazy, and Marty was crazy as well if he ever started taking the guy seriously. Nevertheless, he somehow felt drawn towards the safe. And there was no harm done in trying out combinations – it could even be a fun break from his usual work. The forty-seven-year-old thought hard. If he was a time traveler trapped in the Nineteenth Century – he couldn't help but smile at the idea – then what safe combination would he use?

Suddenly, he remembered something. That would-be-time traveler had told him he was stuck in the year 1885. Apparently, he was Clint Eastwood. And Clint Eastwood had supposedly not died in the ravine on September 7th, 1885. Marty grinned, and dialed the combination. It didn't work.

Then what about the day Emmett had supposedly met his wife? Marty thought hard. He remembered it was the same week – something that was very implausible in itself, of course, since romantic relationships never blossomed quite so fast – and tried to dial several dates in early September. Each of them failed to work. He was stuck here.

The Tannen Valley police chief was about to get up and kick the safe in frustration before exiting when he got another idea. What about the day Emmett had gotten stuck – New Year's Day, 1885?

He hesitated. On one hand, he knew all this was ridiculous. He should just go home and try to forget about the silly lunatic he had met – well, after signing his death sentence of course. But on the other hand, he hadn't had this much fun in quite some time now. Smirking, he tried January 1st, 1885, fully expecting it to fail.

Naturally, in the situation he was convinced the combination would fail, it didn't. Before he knew it, Marty found himself holding the door of an open safe.

The forty-seven-year-old gasped, and peeked inside. It was cluttered with all kinds of documents with complicated diagrams on it. He frowned – how could some lunatic have made such sophisticated papers? And they were all in uncle Emmett's handwriting, too! Or at least, he believed that was his uncle's handwriting – the poor fellow had died years before, so Marty figured he did not have much of a memory to rely on.

As he got the papers out of the safe, after each other, Marty's eye finally fell on one object in particular. However, it was no document – it was a photograph. A photograph depicting Emmett – either one, since they did look remarkably alike after all – on the right, wearing 1880s clothes and looking happier than Marty had seen their prisoner look thus far. On the left, however…

Marty gawked. It was himself – or at least, someone who was the spitting image of him as a teen. "This can't be" he uttered, wishing the photograph to go away. It didn't. "Holy shit!"

The police chief stumbled to his feet and managed to steady himself against the wall. The face that was staring at him from the photograph was so undeniably him that he got nauseous every time he looked at it. When he flipped the picture over, he saw the writing on the back read 'Emmett and Marty, September 5th 1885'.

Him… and Emmett. In 1885. The explanation for the picture was right there, and yet Marty found himself disbelieving it. It had to be some kind of fakery. After all, Emmett couldn't be telling the truth, could he?

That notion calmed him down a bit. It simply couldn't be the case that prisoner Brown was a visitor from another world, and that this world had been created with a time machine. Imagine – if Emmett's story was true, he wasn't even a Tannen! Marty smirked at the idea of being a McFly. The McFly family had never amounted to much, Marty knew that. They had seemingly disappeared from Hill Valley in the 1960s, after their only son, George, had repeatedly shown himself to be a failure. And that guy was supposed to be his Dad?

Marty shook his head. There had to be a rational explanation for all this. But he would need to find it. And he knew he couldn't do anything else but attempt to find it, since he would not feel at ease until he was _absolutely_ sure that prisoner Brown was a madman.

Sighing, he took the documents from the ground, added the photograph to them, and locked the safe. After carefully putting the board back on its place, Marty exited the near-ruin of a house and re-entered his comfortable limousine. He just hoped that once he got back to Tannen Valley, he would be able to put these annoying and distracting thoughts about other timelines to rest and figure out a reasonable explanation for all this. If not, he wasn't sure what else there was left for him to do.


	10. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer: I don't own Back to the Future. Which is probably for the best. **

_Author's Note: Two chapters at once on this sunny day in July, for you to enjoy in your summer. Details with Marty and Doc coming closer to a mutual understanding. Doc is referred to as 'Emmett' throughout because it's from Marty's perspective, and 'our' Marty probably only started calling his friend Doc because they were too far apart in age to be on an actual first-name basis (and of course, later the nickname just stuck). This Marty, being 47 and deeming himself to be in charge of Doc Brown as his prisoner, has no such issues. _

**Chapter Nine**

**Tuesday, June 7, 2016  
>2:30 PM PDT<br>Tannen Valley, California**

Early that morning, Marty Tannen had thought that his short lapse of judgment regarding prisoner Brown had been a mistake. Certainly, the guy did have a pretty interesting set of arguments for his case, but the whole story of time travel was just impossible. It couldn't be done. And the idea of being a McFly… that this whole town was messed up supposedly because of his family, his great family, doing things _wrong_… it just didn't fit in with the things Marty had known for a fact for his entire life.

However, as time passed, Marty had gotten deeper into examining the items he had retrieved from the house. There were a lot of documents he could not do much with, as they detailed the functions of a time machine, but he got the feeling that they were what they claimed to be. Those documents which he _could_ understand were also clearly not the writings of a madman. Diary notes about Emmett's adventures in the Old West. Information about him, too – or rather, the other him, with a characterization of him that was both alien and shockingly familiar. Odd little snippets of adventures Emmett and other-him had supposedly gone through. It was all very interesting and… realistic.

Lunch time came and went, and at 2 PM, Marty knew that for some reason he was actually beginning to believe Emmett. However, there was also one of the big dilemmas of the day – if he believed that what Emmett was saying was true, then he had just condemned an innocent man to an execution the next dawn. Tannen justice did not work in complicated ways – Marty had simply gotten the sentence written down and signed his autograph underneath.

He did not want to admit that he had just sentenced a man to death whose only wish was to get back to his own reality, and as a result, he'd tried to convince himself that everything he saw in front of him was foolishness. Lunacy. Clever lunacy, even coherent lunacy, but it was still insane. It couldn't be true. But he also knew that he didn't know that. And the only way to find out was to go over to Emmett's cell in person once more… and ask. Ask all he needed to know, and this time listen patiently instead of calling prisoner Brown a liar from the start.

That was why he had once again descended down the muddy stairs, this time in a different direction – the death cells were another matter entirely compared to the 'regular' cells. Marty frowned as he headed through the small, confined hallways and past the darkened cells. Surprised prisoners tried to look up at the noise, but Marty didn't pay them much attention. He supposed that he should, though. After all, didn't he have a bit of a duty to these people? It was his task to provide the system with good laws and with good prisons. These prisons were more like old-fashioned dungeons, though.

The forty-seven-year-old shook his head. All of this was Cliff's doing anyway. His brother had the tendency to take jobs from him of which he knew perfectly well that they should be conducted by Marty, according to their various agreements on power control in Tannen Valley. Marty didn't hate his brother, far from it, but he sometimes wished that Cliff could be less… controlling. Of course, it wasn't like _he_ didn't do that too often, as well. Lashing out at his subordinates… sometimes firing them for petty little things…

Marty shook his head. No time worrying about this, he had a mission to conduct. He stopped in front of prisoner Brown's cell and entered it. The man who claimed to be his friend from another world was currently asleep, which allowed Marty the chance to examine his living conditions for a moment. They weren't exactly the best. The situation in a death cell was even worse than in a regular cell, after all. They were covered with all sorts of disgusting crap and Marty knew that the prisoners did not get a chance to go to the toilet in here either. He made a face at the smell, which was worse here than anywhere else in the prison system. "To think you could sleep with that" he muttered, quietly.

"It's not easy, I assure you" Emmett's voice sounded. Marty looked up, startled, to see Emmett smile at him. "I'd noticed you were here, but I had kept quiet for a few moments. Didn't want to deny you the chance to look around."

"Thank you, I suppose" Marty muttered. "That's very… nice. Of you."

"Oh, you're welcome" Emmett replied in the same absurdly polite tone. "So, if I may ask, sir, what are your intentions for coming here?"

Marty let out a sigh. "I found something I wanted to show you" he said. "Something… in the old shack you and the rebels were in."

"Interesting" Emmett responded. "Any reason you didn't take that to your brother or anyone else in the Tannen hierarchy who would be interested in it?"

"Because it concerns you" Marty simply replied. He took the photograph out of his pocket and was about to hand it over, along with some of the more important files, when he realized Emmett was still tied up. "Let me just undo that" he muttered.

He unchained the inventor's arms, and Emmett sat up, staring at Marty. "What have you got for me, then?"

"I was actually hoping you had something for me" Marty replied, smirking. "An explanation. An explanation for these things." He held out the documents he had taken from the place Emmett claimed to have lived in, and handed over the photograph that had first caught his eye. It was one of many.

The older man looked at the picture, intensely. "I know that picture" he whispered, softly. "It was in the safe, wasn't it? I had been trying to find it, but I couldn't. The house had changed too much for it."

"I found it" Marty replied. "The gunshots unearthed one of the wooden boards." He stared at Emmett. "Why? Why is there a picture of… me… on there?"

Emmett smiled faintly. "Because you were with me. In 1885."

"I don't remember any of that."

"That's because it didn't happen to you" Emmett replied. "My trip to 2016 has created a different timeline, one with a divergence point that lies presumably in the early Twentieth Century, most likely at the time of my birth. I think I was swapped with another baby in this timeline, which caused my alternate self to grow up as a Tannen. The Tannens convinced alternate me to invent for them, and he managed to perfect something that turned this town into their own playground."

"Playground?" Marty said, frowning. "That's quite the insult you're throwing at my family there. Remember, you're still going to get shot tomorrow at dawn." He looked at him. "I would tone down those exclamations if I were you."

"If I'm going to die anyway, does it matter?" Emmett replied.

Marty hesitated, but nodded slowly. "Yes" he whispered. "It does. Because if what I'm thinking is true and you are, somehow, I can't believe how or why but _somehow_, you're telling the truth… then I'll do whatever I can to get you out of there." He looked Emmett in the face. "But go on with your explanation."

Emmett frowned, and continued. "Anyway, as a result of the extensive changes the Tannens made, your current father was able to get married to your mother, and you were born in the new timeline… but you're not the same you, not the you that existed in the old timeline. You have a different father, just like Cliff has a different mother. The you that was in 1885 was a version of you that had George McFly as a father."

Marty frowned. "That doesn't make sense, does it?" he asked. "If I was born differently, how come that other me is still in those pictures?"

"Apparently, the changes made in 1920 do not affect 1885, because that was thirty-five years before that date" Emmett replied. "That would make sense, since despite the changes to the world I was still stranded in 1885 and spent ten years stuck there. Those photographs aren't erasing… but this reality might."

"What do you mean?" Marty asked.

"As a result of your father's other self journeying to the past, the cause of his journey has been made impossible" Emmett explained. "In this universe, there was no time machine around on June 5th, 2016, which Biff Tannen could have stolen and brought to the past. As a result, this reality should be erased since it has no reason to exist… but then it would exist, since if the old timeline was restored, then the time machine would be there again."

"So it's a loop?" Marty asked.

"Not quite" Emmett said. "Since this is time we're talking about, it really can't loop around and change from reality to reality like that. Because I'm out of my own time, I would also know if something like that happened, and I haven't seen the world change back to what I define as normal once during the time I was imprisoned here. No, what should happen, at least according to my theories, is that the continuum eventually can't bear the strain anymore. Then, it should theoretically collapse."

Marty gasped. "Wait – are you saying the universe would collapse? All because of some silly time travel not taking place?"

"Oh, no" Emmett assured him. "The paradox might be limited to our own galaxy, perhaps a few surrounding galaxies… it's all theories."

"Well that's a relief" Marty muttered.

Emmett smirked. "You're just like my Marty. He reacted the exact same way when I explained my theories to him on our visit to 2015."

"Your _visit_ to…" Marty shook his head. "I can't believe I'm even listening to this. It's all nonsense. Fantasy! Balderdash!"

"You were the one to get down here" Emmett pointed out.

"Yeah, but I think I should be leaving again" Marty muttered. "It's just… I look at the photograph and I see those documents and I know somewhere that it's got to be true, but… it can't." He shook his head. "Time travel? Other realities? _Me as a McFly_?!"

"Is that really so horrifying for you?" Emmett asked.

"As a matter of fact, yeah" Marty said. "I've been raised to be proud of being a Tannen. Our family is the most influential one in Tannen Valley. We rule this town, and we rule it fair and right!"

Emmett frowned. "Now, that last part is just nonsense and you know it" he said. "Look at this prison. Look at the resistance movements that have cropped up against the regime of your family. Do you really think any of that would happen if your rule was fair?"

Marty glared at him. "My father's a hero. He built the Tannen Empire which gave jobs to thousands of Tannen Valley citizens. He built our magnificent casino. He was a visionary, a genius, one of the greatest sons this town has ever had. Even Cliff doesn't dare to touch his legacy because he means everything to our citizens."

"Perhaps to some" Emmett said. "But to the majority?" He stared at Marty. "And if you don't believe me, why don't you go look it up?"

"Where?" Marty argued. "You're acting like it's some kind of family secret!"

"That's because it is" Emmett responded. "Look around. Your brother arrested me on the day you were away, just barely a few minutes after I arrived in this timeline, and for nonsensical reasons. Even you, an insider to the regime, were appalled by this. I doubt this was done at random. I was arrested at that moment because Cliff knew from old Biff who I was and didn't want me to end his regime. And since Cliff wasn't alive yet in 1920, your father must have also known. And his father, and _his_ father. The entire family must have known the secret… all except you, apparently."

"That's enough!" Marty exclaimed. "I can't believe you're actually saying this!"

"I'm saying it because it's true, '_Mister_' Tannen!"

Marty stared at him. "All right" he said, redoing Emmett's chains. The surprised inventor barely resisted. "I'll go look for information and see if you can prove me wrong. But if I can't find anything, if there's nothing around…" He made a 'dead' motion with his hand. "Then I'm afraid things won't end so well for you."

Emmett stared at him, then nodded slowly. "Fine" he said. "But if you genuinely want to go look for evidence, then don't forget the old saying while you're at it."

Marty frowned. "_What_ old saying?"

Emmett smiled. "Don't forget to look at what's right under your nose, Marty" he simply said. "No one looks there. But when they do… you'd be surprised what you could find."

Marty nodded slowly. "Fine" he muttered. "I'll have a look around. But if I don't find anything, this is the last conversation we'll have. Fare well, Emmett Brown."

He left the cell without saying another word.


	11. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer: I don't own Back to the Future. **

_Author's Note: And the next chapter. Hope the ending isn't too cliff-hangery for you. Yes, the situation looks uncomfortable for both Marty and Doc, but just remember that if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything! That's one of Doc's greatest quotes. And remember to review! That's not one of his quotes, but it's fitting nevertheless.  
><em>

**Chapter Ten**

**Tuesday, June 7, 2016  
>04:00 PM PDT<br>Tannen Valley, California**

About half an hour later, Marty was almost certain that his initial conclusion had been right – Emmett Brown, or at least the man who claimed to be Emmett Brown, was a complete nutcase. And he was just as nutty to at least partly have believed him.

He had been looking around Cliff's office for around three quarters now, while his beloved brother had once again gone off to watch a movie with some girls. What Cliff's obsession with girls was all about, Marty had never been sure of. He liked women too, and it wasn't like he didn't have girlfriends like Cliff did. However, the radical way his brother handled them, and always preferring there to be as many girls as possible… Marty shook his head. He had never understood his brother on that and he never would.

Anyway, he had spent quite some time in Cliff's office now, but he hadn't found any secret button. Not under his desk, not under the main table itself, not even behind any of the paintings Cliff had put all around his office (to show off, Marty thought). He'd been through every obvious place and quite a few non-obvious places. If there was something around here, he would have to have had a sixth sense to find it.

Eventually, he gave up, and walked back to his own office. He tried to laugh miserably, wondering how he had ever gotten himself into this. How could he have believed some nutcase who talked about time travel, of all things? Who had had a picture of a younger him in 1885, yes, but that could've been photo shopped by anyone. Although the picture did look very real, at least at first glance…

Marty tried to shake it off. What was done was done. No need to get all angry about it, after all, the guy who had told him all this nonsense was going to get executed the next day anyway. He entered his office, and leaned down against his chair. Maybe he should call some girls up, too – he knew they would like it. He paid them just as much as Cliff, but he wasn't as demanding. And they had normal conversations, too. Marty knew that Cliff's girls were only supposed to say 'yes' and 'no' when Cliff demanded it from them. He shook his head at his brother's silly ways, then looked at the button he pressed whenever he needed something. He smirked. At least this button was no secret thing. After all, this was his office, and there were no secrets Cliff could hide from him in here.

Could he?

The forty-seven-year-old frowned. He recalled Emmett's last words to him – don't forget to look what's right under your nose. Right under his nose was this office, and if Cliff had hidden anything related to 'the family secret' in here, there was no way Marty could have ever thought of going to look for it. He wouldn't ever have done so… until today.

Marty looked around, and a smile curved on his lips. He could make a final quest through his own room. See if he could find anything that hinted towards Cliff being in a conspiracy against him and against Emmett. If he didn't find anything, he would be able to rest assured that executing Emmett was perhaps tragic, but not as great a mistake as it would be if any of his stories were true.

He looked around the room, gazing at the various paintings. Of course, his paintings didn't have secrets behind them. He knew – this was his office, after all, and he regularly checked the paintings for dust. There was one painting he had a safe with money behind, but that was one Cliff knew of. Marty smirked as he thought of that safe. It was designed in a way that even if someone took away the painting, it would still look like an ordinary wall. Only those who knew of the safe would know which spots in the wall to press to reveal the secret content. Marty figured he could go look for a mechanism like that along the walls or perhaps on the ground – now that should be something Cliff would be able to keep hidden, especially if it was in plain sight and therefore unlikely to attract second glances. Of course, if he did try to go look for it, Marty figured he wouldn't be done until Emmett's head was already on the chopping block.

There was also the possibility that something was under his desk. Marty thought that theory was less likely, as he should have been able to notice if anything was amiss. Nevertheless, he decided to check it out. After a few minutes, though, he came to the conclusion that the desk was unlikely to contain any sorts of secrets besides the one he knew of. He was here too often for Cliff to have hidden anything he wouldn't have stumbled upon. And he knew that his family would realize he wasn't dumb enough to check it out if he found some entry to a passageway. Sighing, he leaned back in his chair, having exhausted the alternatives. What was left for him to do?

What was… left…

Marty stared at the chair he was on. It was loose from the ground, but moved rather heavily. He'd always deemed that kind of strange. It wasn't until now, though, that he really paid attention to it. Why did the chair move so inconveniently compared to any other chairs its size? Curious, Marty got off his seat and knelt down next to it, examining the sides thoroughly. His hand slid along the back of the chair until he felt a place where the material seemed a little too uneven. There could be… wires, behind the façade of an ordinary floating chair. A button activating a remote, cleverly concealed?

"Here goes nothing" he muttered, as he slammed his hand against that part of the chair as hard as he could. He heard a loud buzz, and…

…and suddenly his desk _moved up from the ground. _Actually, that wasn't true. The ground was actually moving along with it. Marty stared, dumbfounded, as the ground his desk was on rotated 90 degrees. The gaping hole that was now inside his office revealed dusty stairs leading down.

For a moment, Marty just stared, stunned. Then, he cursed softly. The mere _thought_ of it! That Cliff had been hiding all this from him, his own brother! He knew it had to be Cliff's work – in the apparatus installed underneath the ground below the desk, he clearly recognized the handiwork of assistants of the Tannen family business. He simply stared at it for a while, not knowing what to do. "This is _heavy_" he groaned.

Suddenly, Marty heard voices coming down a hallway near the stairs. He could hear them reasonably well, which made him wonder why he had never heard anything in his office before. Probably, Cliff had the whole thing made sound-proof so his brother could not be disturbed… in any way. Marty balled his fists and slowly got on the ground, trying to listen to the voices.

"What do you think of the new project?" one of the voices asked. "I think it has some potential. The latest perfections to the mind influencer seem promising."

"Yeah, looks like the labs inventors clearly show that not only Dr. Tannen can work scientific miracles" the second voice said. "If this works, we'll be able to influence people through the genes to obey the Tannen family. At last, the last miscreants of Tannen Valley can be brought to compliance."

"Of course it works" the first voice said. "The Tannen family hired those inventors, and they always do good work. And now, everyone will realize just how great they are."

Marty cursed again, softly. The voice sounded familiar – it was the tone of voice nearly everyone in Tannen Valley had when they talked about Marty's family. Marty had always thought that was because they really adored them, and even when he grew up, he had taken that adoration for granted. But to hear someone say things that implied that it was all the result of brainwashing…

"Oh no" he whispered, stumbling back to his seat. "Oh no! NO! NO!"

"Did you hear something, Ted?" the second voice asked.

Not waiting for the mechanic's counterpart to reply, Marty rushed up from his chair again. He pushed the plate on his chair and the desk reverted to its normal position. After all that was done, he checked twice whether it was now solid again, then leaned back in his chair, his brain raging with emotions and thoughts. It was an odd, instable mixture of horror, disgust, fear…

Everything he had ever taken for granted seemed to be bent on collapsing around him. Marty had accepted the fact that the Tannens needed to use some wild tactics to gain money and power from the populace. He had always accepted _that_. But to think it all relied on some strange mind-warping technology 'Dr. Tannen' – that had to be his granduncle, this world's Emmett – had developed…

Marty frowned. He noticed he was thinking about Emmett as being his granduncle's other self, and nodded slowly. It was true. All of it was true. And since it was, there was only one thing he could do now. He had to save Emmett and save Tannen Valley. No, Hill Valley. Marty's face changed into a smile. _Hill _Valley was what he needed to save.

oooooooo

Over the next few hours, Marty tried to figure out a plan to save his new accomplice without having to revoke the execution bill. If he tried that, he would need Cliff's permission, and his brother would get suspicious and the entire plan could blow up in his face. So that meant he needed to work within the existing perimeters. Marty knew that he needed to distract the guards long enough for Emmett to escape. The execution site would be too late, as Emmett would then be surrounded by a large crowd of men and he could never sneak away easily. In the cell, it wouldn't work either. No, the only way to rescue his alternate timeline friend was to do it on the way to the execution site.

The police chief had thought long about the implications such a rescue might have. He knew it meant that he would not remain safe either. The chances were big that it would become clear he was aiding Emmett, and if that happened, Marty wasn't sure Cliff would be willing to stand in for his brother anymore. And the forty-seven-year-old didn't really want to go plead with his brother for anything either. Not after all he had seen and heard. Right now, he knew the only way out was to leave Tannen Valley.

It was thus that, throughout the evening, Marty continued to gather important documents, all while preparing their joint escape. Emmett was blissfully unaware of all this, but Marty visited him late in the evening to rely the details of his plan. The inventor was largely enthusiastic, although he worried about the success of Marty's plan – after all, Tannen Valley was a big place they might not be able to escape as easily as Marty presented it. However, Marty shrugged off his concerns. He had this plan well-prepared, and was confident that it would work. Eventually, Marty's confidence helped to get Emmett more excited as well, and he agreed in principle to the plan. Not that Marty would have listened to him if he hadn't agreed – subconsciously, Marty Tannen still felt that he held some kind of authority over his prisoner.

He eventually turned in at 11 PM, after worrying half the evening about whether or not he would be able to leave his hometown. He knew the situation demanded it, but Marty felt extremely reluctant to leave everything behind. He had lived here for years, happy, powerful and safe, with his family…

Well, there was no going back now. The past had been messed up, and Marty knew they needed to build a time machine and fix it. Or at the very least, he needed to get Emmett out of town. The forty-seven-year-old hoped that things would naturally progress from there.

Of course, in the end, it would turn out not to be that simple.


	12. Chapter 11

**Disclaimer: I don't own Back to the Future. **

_Author's Note: Yet another update, and once more a two-for-the-price-of-one package. What can I say, I was inspired. Jay for progress at returning the world back to normal!  
><em>

**Chapter Eleven**

**Wednesday, June 8, 2016  
>07:30 AM PDT<br>Hill Valley, California**

On the morning he was scheduled to be executed, Emmett Brown awoke early. That was only natural – after all, an impending death wasn't something one could easily sleep over. Yet, he felt like he shouldn't have anything to worry about. After all, Marty had ensured him that he would be rescued. But this Marty was not the Marty he knew, and he might decide to go back on his words. And if that would happen… Emmett shivered. Things would _not_ look well for him then.

His breakfast came and went without too much trouble. It wasn't much, and for a supposed last meal, it was especially bad. Emmett barely took a few bites to get some strength, but left the rest. He was then exposed to some taunting by the guard, which left him resisting the urge to lash out at the man. He knew he couldn't do anything, confined as he was, but it was still frustrating. More than ever, he wished to be home again.

At roughly 7:20, or at least that was what their watches said, a small group of three guards came to fetch him. He was released from his chains, made a token attempt to struggle, and then stopped resistance as they pulled him across seemingly endless stairs, towards the open square the execution was supposed to take place. Emmett gulped, as the stairs ended and he could see some lights around him. Now death was getting _really_ close…

"Halt there!"

Emmett looked up to see Marty approaching the guards, dressed in formal attire. "Excuse me, you can't take this man."

The guards looked at him, puzzled. "Your brother gave us explicit orders to transport prisoner Brown to the execution centre, Mr. Tannen" the one guard said.

"I'm aware of that" Marty said, feigning calmness. "But the orders have been changed. Prisoner Brown will need to come another way."

"Why?" the guard said. "This is the right way to the execution facility…"

"That's correct" Marty replied. "But prisoner Brown has asked us whether he could see a priest, first. He needs to clear his soul before getting executed." He smiled. "Don't worry, it won't take more than a few minutes."

The guards shrugged. "Fine" he said. "We'll be waiting here for him."

"Good" Marty replied. "Come on, Brown."

"Thank you, Mr. Tannen" Emmett replied. Marty took his arm and pulled him over to a sideway. When they got there, Emmett turned to his friend and gave him a quirky smile. "Having to see a priest, really? I'm not even Catholic. Or Anglican, or Orthodox, or whatever religious branches have priests."

"It sounded plausible to me, and apparently to them too," Marty replied, rapidly undoing Emmett's chains. "My brothers' goons aren't the brightest bulbs. Now, we need to get this done quick. This hallway has no end and it'll be just a few minutes before they realize you've escaped."

"Fine," Emmett said, as Marty undid his chains. "But where do you want to go then? If there's no way out of here…"

"I didn't say that" Marty said, smiling mischievously. "There's a secret exit to the roof right here – I found it when I was researching everything last night. And there is a chopper on the roof." He looked at Emmett, concerned. "Can you walk? You've been tied up for quite some time…"

"I think I can manage" Emmett ensured him. "But where is that exit of yours? It doesn't look like there is something around here anywhere…"

In response, Marty softly pressed on a tile on the right side of the sideway. The wall slid out of the way, and there was a small hole viewable. "Right here" he said. "All we have to do is to go through now – although we'll have to stay on our knees, it's not exactly the most comfortable place of all."

Emmett soon saw what that meant. The exit was very small, and he had to pull himself up to basically crawl his way up through the tunnel. He was glad that he didn't have claustrophobia, since that would have made the situation even worse. Luckily Marty didn't seem to have any problems either, but nevertheless neither one of them said a word before they arrived at the end of the tunnel.

"There we are" Marty muttered. He pulled himself up to the roof and pushed off some sand and dust.

"You think we've been tracked down?" Emmett asked, following him out of the tunnel. It was just so good to be able to breath in fresh air again. "How long has it been, anyway?" He really missed having access to the time. It was bad enough that he couldn't control it, not having a time machine, but having little clue what time it was…

Marty shrugged. "Can't have been more than a couple of minutes. Anyway, there's my chopper."

Emmett looked up. Indeed, on the other end of the roof, a small private chopper could be seen. The letters 'TANNEN INDUSTRIES' were painted on the side. He looked at Marty. "That yours?"

"That's right" Marty said. "We should probably be flying it out of Tannen Valley close to the road, as if we were a car – if there is any trouble, they'll come looking for us in the sky first."

"Whatever you say, Marty" Emmett replied. His friend probably knew this place better than he did.

They got into the heli, Marty taking the steering wheel. "All right, Emmett" he said, as he took the chopper into the sky and flew it away from the Courthouse. "What's your idea?"

"I don't know" Emmett admitted. "What's yours?"

"Well, I thought you wanted to change history" Marty replied. "That's what you were saying, right? About how all this is some messed up timeline because an alternate version of Dad went back to 1920 and…"

"Yeah, I know what I've said" Emmett replied. "But I can't go back to change it. Not without a time machine." He shook his head. "Biff… your father has stolen my time train, and without it, I can't go back." He sighed. "I just wish I knew where he had taken it. Then at least I would have known whether Clara and the boys are safe."

"Clara and the boys?" Marty asked. "That's right, you were married… gee, that must be tough, not knowing when they are."

"You can say that again" Emmett replied grimly. "But musing over it won't do me any good. We've been together for ten years now… or one hundred and thirty-one, depending on how you look at it... and I know Clara wouldn't want me to waste time worrying about her." He looked at Marty, bemused. "What made you change your mind about me, anyway?"

"Well, of course there was that photograph" Marty said. "And after the evidence I discovered last night… well, I've begun to realize I have only seen the top of the iceberg when it comes to the horrors my family has committed. To imagine Cliff would be capable of all this…" He shook his head. "You've put my entire sense of reality on its head, Doctor Brown. To think that no member of my family was ever a genuinely nice person…"

"Well, there's still your mother" Emmett said. "She might have been brainwashed by the rest of the family, but that doesn't mean she can't be regarded as a nice person anymore." He looked at Marty, again wondering just what was going on in the mind of this man that was similar and yet so different from the Marty McFly he knew. "You don't have any regrets about breaking me out, do you?"

"None whatsoever" Marty assured him. "I must admit, I'm not feeling all right about betraying my family. I know it's the right thing to do, it's just that I've known them for so long, and…" He shook his head. "Well, never mind. I know what I should do now, and I'm going to help you no matter what it will cost. You said you needed a time machine?"

"That's right" Emmett confirmed. "I don't suppose you have one around here somewhere?"

"Not in my pocket" Marty joked. "But I will help you anyhow. We have those papers retrieved from your safe – surely you should be able to do something with that."

"I should" Emmett said. "I know I had some papers stacked in there that should go a long way, and I have my knowledge of how to build a working time machine – I've done it twice, after all. Perhaps getting an actual car will be the biggest problem. And finding a safe place to build the machine."

"Don't worry" Marty said. "I'll help you out wherever I can."

"I'm not sure how much that'll be, though" Emmett said. "You'll have to remember, your family is no longer going to support you once they find out that you've helped me escape. After all, you are coming with me now – you wouldn't have done that if you had figured that Cliff would just welcome you back with open arms."

"I should still have some money stacked away somewhere" Marty muttered. "No matter what happens, I think I'll still be able to access it. They won't be quite so radical to freeze all my cash right away, and I'll get to work immediately on getting money off my account."

"Whatever you say, Marty" Emmett muttered. "I'm not sure if it'll work out, though – time machine building requires a lot of cash. Like I said, I've done it twice."

"And I'll do whatever I can, like _I_ said" Marty replied, slightly annoyed. "And if that's not enough, then we'll think about what to do next when we get there."

"Now that's the spirit" Emmett agreed. "I like to plan ahead, but sometimes, you've just got to hope that everything will turn out fine."

Marty was about to say something in response when they suddenly heard an engine behind them. "What's that?" Emmett asked. "You don't think they're onto us already, do you?" He doubted it considering the short period of time that had elapsed, but with these dangerous alternate Tannens he was prepared for the worst.

Marty shrugged. "I don't think it's them" he said. "Would you mind taking a look?"

Emmett turned around, but at the same time, Marty let out a shrill gasp. Emmett looked around to see that both in front of them and behind them, cars were coming to a halt. In the sky, they could see other choppers menacing them. "What do you-" Emmett began, but then, a gunshot silenced him.

"Holy shit" Marty whispered. "Uh, Emmett, you're the scientist – our chances of getting out of here?"

"Negligible" Emmett replied. "We could try to make a break for it, but one shot into vital engines and we're toast. I would recommend you to land."

Marty nodded, and he put the chopper down the final inches towards the ground. He opened the door, and Emmett opened his own. They were greeted by the unpleasant sight of several armed men walking towards them.

"Who are you?" Marty asked, in a tone indicating that he was still used to being in command, and did not like the experience of someone forcing him to cave in.

"We're members of the anti-Tannen resistance" the first man said. "I believe Mr. Brown has had some experience with us already. We're here to arrest you, Mr. Tannen."

"On what authority?" Marty snarled.

"On the authority of our leader, Miss Jennifer Parker" the man said, undisturbed by the looks Marty was shooting him. "We're sure she'll be very interested in what we found here. Cliff Tannen's very own brother, and that no-good traitor we wasted effort on liberating."

"I'm not a traitor" Emmett snapped. He knew it probably wouldn't help, but his sense of justice stopped him from just permitting that insult without doing anything against it.

"We'll let the boss decide that" the man said. "Come on, you two."

Emmett looked at Marty, and sighed deeply. He just wished this would turn out all right.


	13. Chapter 12

**Disclaimer: I don't own Back to the Future. **

_Author's Note: And the second update, leaving the story at a suspenseful note yet again. Also, apparently weapon control and such are big issues in the United States, so I assure you that I honestly didn't intend any political message with any of this chapter, or even with this story (well, except that generally, dictatorships are really bad, but you should know that already). So, basically, please read and review. Constructive criticism is always welcome!  
><em>

**Chapter Twelve**

**Wednesday, June 8, 2016  
>10:00 AM PDT<br>Tannen Valley, California**

Cliff Tannen grimaced, as he thought of what all had happened this morning. He usually didn't wake up until nine, but now, things were different. He had wanted to watch the execution of Emmett Brown, troublemaker number one and the main threat to Tannen Valley. Instead, he had been forced to sit for ten minutes seeing nothing, and after extensive research, it had turned out that Emmett had escaped, _along _with that lousy brother of his.

Cliff slammed his fist on the desk, frustrated. His father's alternate self had planned everything out so well, and the generations of Tannens that preceded him had helped as well. And really, how hard could it be to get rid of one miscreant? Apparently harder than it sounded.

The thought that his brother, Marty, was in cahoots with Emmett – or at least, he had disappeared at the same time Emmett had, and there were reports from the guards that he had been the last to see the alternate reality inventor – made Cliff feel even worse. Getting Marty into the Tannen family was one of the most brilliant deeds his Dad had done – of course, the main reason he had taken George's place was to get Lorraine, but getting rid of Marty McFly was also a significant part of it. But despite everything their family had done in hundred years, their carefully prepared plan was falling apart in three mere days.

As he was musing about that, his secretary, a young, timid woman, approached him in her usual revealing dress – these days, he didn't even allow girls who didn't look good in them to ascend to any kind of position in his office anymore. "Sir?" she asked. "We have received a message from the anti-Tannen resistance group. They say they have kidnapped your brother and prisoner Brown and are holding them for ransom."

Cliff's face brightened instantly. The anti-Tannen group was holding Marty and Brown for ransom! That had to be the best news he had ever heard! If he managed to catch up to them, he could not only get rid of them, but also of Brown. That left one problem, though – what to do with his no-good brother, Martin David Tannen?

The Great Leader pondered that thought for a couple of seconds. Marty was, in all honesty, a nuisance. That had been the case ever since his ascension to power in the Tannen ranks. Marty had never been willing to go ahead with what they had planned, always seeking other ways. His advocacy of leniency and laid-back rule sometimes made Cliff disgusted. Yet, he had always adjusted to his brother's strange ideas, because he knew that in the end, Marty would come around. And he was still a Tannen, after all.

This time, however, Marty had crossed the line. He had given direct aid to a prisoner, Emmett Brown, the man who presented an even greater threat to his family than the Parker group did simply because he had the ability to construct a time machine which he could take back in time to erase what his alternate father had wrought. In essence, Cliff pondered, their incorporation of Marty into the family had been their own undoing already. The new Marty was a Tannen, but also had clear Baines genes, and he showed it. No matter how they altered history, they couldn't get rid of the bad traits in his brother's character. And in a way, this had made the situation worse. Because though Marty had done no good, he was Cliff's brother, meaning that he could not treat him badly. He'd have to use leniency.

Cliff made a face at that thought and shuddered. No. He could not show compassion to Marty, even if he wanted to. It would become the downfall of the regime, since if Marty had tried once, he could try again. He would have to get rid of Marty Tannen – permanently.

He looked up at his secretary. "What kind of ransom do they want?"

"According to the message I read, the anti-Tannen group wants the release of all political prisoners and the handover of one million dollars in cash, sir" the young woman said. "In exchange, they are offering your brother and prisoner Brown. They have also agreed on a location for the prison exchange – the bridge over Eastwood Ravine."

Cliff smirked. "Ah, a good old bridge exchange. Very well, then. Make sure a message is sent that I agree with their wishes. The exchange will occur at three P.M. this afternoon."

The woman complied. "Very well, sir" she said, walking out of Cliff's office. This left the fifty-one-year-old with some time to think. Now that he had concluded that he didn't care whether any of the participants in the exchange survived, he knew that he didn't have to play fair anymore. If he planned this well, he could get rid of his brother, a stupid time traveler, and an annoying protest group in one big blow. It made him grin when he thought of it.

oooooooo

"Well, that ended well."

Marty stared at Emmett, as he was pacing around the small room they had been locked up in. "Don't smile" he said. "You're just as caught up in this as I am."

"That's right, but at least I'm used to it" Emmett said. "Your idea was, if I recall correctly, that everything would be solved and all would turn out fine. Or at least, that was the impression I got when you explained to me how you would help me finance the creation of a time machine. It's obvious that you were a little too optimistic."

Marty opened his mouth to comment, then closed it again. "Okay, you're right" he said. "Got any ideas on what we do now?"

"Wait" Emmett said. "There's nothing else we can do. Except for making a break for it after escaping from this room, but that ignores two little problems – one, we can't escape from this room, two, even if we get out of the room, we're liable to be stopped by whatever guards Jennifer has put out there."

"'Jennifer'?" Marty said. "You're on a first-name basis with that woman now?"

"Not really, but I know her from my reality" Emmett said. "She's your girlfriend. Wife in 2016, but since that's not my home time, 'girlfriend' is more familiar to me."

Marty looked at him and frowned. "How on earth did that happen?"

"You met, you fell in love… and by this time, you got married" Emmett ticked off. "It's a different world, Marty."

Marty shrugged. "Whatever."

The door was opened just then and two guards came in. "Mrs. Parker has agreed to a bridge exchange with your brother, Tannen" the first guard informed them. "You are to be exchanged at Eastwood Ravine Bridge for all political prisoners Cliff has captured."

Marty began to smile faintly. "That's good news!" he exclaimed. "I knew Cliff wouldn't let us down! Not over such a minor matter, anyway…"

Emmett frowned. "Marty, I hope you're not extremely insulted if I say that I don't have much faith in your brother's honesty."

"Not extremely" Marty said. "But to some extent, yeah. Shouldn't you be grateful Cliff is helping us?"

"If he was helping us, yes" Emmett replied. "But somehow, I doubt that. I know your family, Marty – I've known them for a long time, and ever since you found those files, you know them too. They cannot be relied upon to keep their word."

Marty stared at him. "Perhaps you're right" he admitted. "But Cliff's still my brother, and I'd like to believe he would keep his word in a case like this, since this is our lives we are talking about. Even if he doesn't care about you, which I would expect, he might still care enough about me to rescue me."

Emmett looked at him. "If that's what you believe, go ahead and believe it" he muttered. "I won't stop you from hoping it, but I'm just afraid it will backfire drastically." He shook his head. "Never mind that right now."

"Indeed" the guard said. "Come on, you two. To the bridge."

Emmett and Marty were roughly pushed out of the shack they were held in, and were transported towards the bridge. The next half hour passed like a blur. Marty was excited about possible release, but he had to admit that he couldn't shake off the uncomfortable feelings Emmett's talk about his brother had given him. As for the inventor himself, he appeared to be highly uncomfortable as well, saying little to nothing on the ride there.

They were pushed out the moment the car came to a halt, which barely gave them time to come to their senses. Marty and Emmett obediently walked up to the bridge, where Jennifer and her guards were waiting. On the other side, Marty could faintly make out the contours of the Tannen family limousine.

He then looked at the bridge the exchange was supposed to take place. Eastwood Ravine Bridge had been named after a man (his other self, or so Emmett said) who fell into it in 1885 after a confusing incident with some train robbers. Since he was a local hero, the ravine had been named after him. Right now, the ravine was very different from how it had been in 1885. Ever since his father had started using it to dump nuclear waste, the entire surroundings had gone to ruin. The skies were dark, the trees dying and the grass already dead. Marty normally hadn't paid attention to such issues all that much, but right now, his perspective on things was changing. If there was anything his conversations with Emmett had taught him, it was that the current Tannen administration was not the way to go for Tannen Valley. For Hill Valley.

"Look" Emmett whispered. Marty looked up to see his brother approaching on the other side of the bridge, accompanied by a group of twenty prisoners. Jennifer walked onto the bridge as well, accompanied by two guards who pushed Emmett and Marty along, respectively. They each stopped at about one third of the way from their side of the bridge.

"Where are the other prisoners, Cliff?" Jennifer called out. "There have to be more. Our sources indicate that at least seventy people are being held in the cells of Tannen Industries."

"Then your sources are wrong" Cliff said. "These are all I got." He looked at her. "Now, why don't you release your captives first?"

"I'm not sure whether I should" Jennifer said. "You don't have any guards with you… it's kind of conspicuous. What are you up to, Tannen?"

Cliff smirked. "I guess I couldn't have expected to fool you" he said. "Oh, well then." He gestured towards his prisoners, who all pulled out guns. "You didn't think I was going to make a real prisoner swap, were you?"

"Hey!" Marty called out. "I know that you're trying to rescue us, but that's not fair!" He started walking over to Cliff. "You know you can't just shoot –"

His sentence was cut off when Cliff pointed his own gun at him and growled. "You no-good, ignorant _wuss_" he hissed. "I should've gotten rid of you a long time ago. I suppose today is better than never."

Marty gawked. "W-what are you talking about?" he asked, stunned.

"You still haven't figured it out, have you?" Cliff said, smirking. "Oh boy, you're such a silly guy. I can't believe you're an actual Tannen."

"I am, but I'm not planning to stay it" Marty said, angrily. "You're not going to get away with this, Cliff!"

"Really?" Cliff said, smiling broadly. "I think I am. These people are all loyal to me, and they're armed. They outnumber you and those silly rebels easily. But don't worry, I'll get you a wonderful funeral. The official story will be that you were fighting on our side, of course – can't relay to the press just how I really feel about you."

Marty scowled at his brother, who simply ignored him and turned to Jennifer. "As for you, Parker, you're doomed as well" he informed her. "We've finally got you where we want you and I should really order you to be tortured to death. But I'll make a deal with you. If you give me information about the rest of your organization, you'll get a painless shot to the head immediately after. What do you say?"

Jennifer smiled – an odd look on her considering the situation. "I could have figured you would break our agreement, Tannen. Your family isn't one for keeping deals, after all."

"That's correct" Cliff smugly confirmed. "I especially like how easy you fell for it, hook, line and sinker. If I had known it was this simple, I would have pulled this stunt years ago."

Jennifer looked at him. "Oh, I believe not" she said. "Boys… I think it's time to ATTACK!"

Silence reigned after she had yelled that last word. Cliff's goons, at first nervous, slowly started to relax again. Cliff laughed and shook his head. "Seems like your boys are all too afraid to do anything" he said. "Serves them right – we've got agents all over the place. One move towards weapon boxes and they get a shot through the head."

"All over the place, you say?" Jennifer replied.

"That's right" Cliff confirmed. "Why, I wouldn't – "

He didn't get time to finish his sentence because at that particular moment, ten choppers flew over the bridge. They reminded Marty of the ones his family employed, but they didn't have the Tannen logo on them. Before they knew it, the choppers opened fire on the Cliff-crowd. Some of them even dropped bombs on the bridge, damaging it and drowning a couple of Cliff's allies. As if that wasn't enough commotion, Jennifer took advantage of the mess and ordered her lackeys to grab their own weapons.

As the Parker group started firing their guns as well, Marty looked over at Emmett, who had jumped down. "You know, I suppose you're right" he said. "My world is a _mess_."


	14. Chapter 13

**Disclaimer: I don't own Back to the Future**

_Author's Note: Here's the new chapter. References to violence and minor character death, but then again this is rated T. Also, in case that one significant line from Jennifer sounded familiar to you, that one is directly lifted from the Game (end of Episode 2, Edna Strickland). I did say this would have references, after all. And don't worry, it won't get as gory after this anymore. And the chapter ends on an optimistic tone.  
><em>

**Chapter Thirteen**

**Wednesday, June 8, 2016  
>03:10 PM PDT<br>Eastwood Ravine Bridge  
>Tannen Valley, California<strong>

Emmett found himself breathing rapidly, as he was lying down on the bridge. It brought back bad memories from his last trip with the original DeLorean. Of course, it had been Marty that had almost been overrun by that train, but Emmett had known it might have happened and worried all about it – probably even more than Marty had, considering it had only been a few moments to him and the scientist had had years to mull it over. Additionally, this also brought back memories of him getting shot by Libyans, considering all the bullets flying around. It made him sum his lesson from this adventure up to one thing: If he got out of here and back to his own world alive and well, the next time he celebrated his birthday, he would stay in bed all day. Period.

One look up told him Marty wasn't hiding like he was – he figured the forty-seven-year-old had more experience with this than he had. After all, he had grown up in this world. On the other hand, maybe he didn't – when would the sons of the ruling family get a chance to experience a gun fight?

The bullets kept flying around his ears, and occasionally hit the bridge near him, giving Emmet quite a fright. Thankfully, no one was aiming at him – the fight was still clearly Tannen group vs. Parker group, with Marty being a reluctant participant on the Parker side, mostly defending himself. Emmett wondered what his non-friend was thinking about all this. He had to have been shocked after hearing Cliff wanted to kill him, but he wasn't sure whether that translated into a wish to murder, or even hurt, his own brother.

Emmett stared down into the ravine, trying to think of something else than the risk of getting shot. He couldn't help his semi-allies – after all, he didn't have a gun. Therefore, he would just have to stay put, and perhaps run for it if Cliff gained the upper hand. With that in mind, perhaps he should keep his attention with the fight.

He stood up carefully, and stared at the scene around him. The Tannen group was down to roughly half of their original count, with the rest having been killed in a gruesome way. Jennifer's associates had lost a few important members but were still resisting as well. Emmett was just wondering how long this would go on when it happened.

Cliff, who had narrowly managed to dodge several bullets, had taken an old-fashioned looking sword out of his coat. After yelling something Emmett couldn't hear, Cliff charged towards the Parker group with the members of his own group protecting their leader. That got another load of them killed, as the entire Parker gang tried to protect Jennifer and shot feverishly to defend her. However, Cliff wasn't aiming for her.

Before he knew it, Emmett found Cliff Tannen approaching him with his sword. He could barely get back to his feet before the sword was pointed straight at his throat "You know, this may not be the most efficient or satisfying way to get rid of you, but I think it'll do" Cliff hissed. "You've caused us enough trouble, Brown, and now you're finally going to pay for it!"

"I don't think so, Cliff."

Cliff and Emmett both turned to the speaker, but Cliff's cry had barely left his lips when the familiar sound of a gunshot was heard. Cliff fell down – Emmett narrowly avoided him – and lay dying on the ground. The inventor stared at him, then looked up at Marty.

His friend carefully put his gun back in his pocket. "I did what I had to do" he whispered. "I think."

A loud cry of "ATTACK!" disrupted them for one second. Marty and Emmett looked up to see the Parker gang once more attack the now disorganized Tannen gang. The group fell back and rapidly disintegrated. They watched in astonishment as the last men fell, and before they knew it, all was over.

"Heavy" Marty quipped. "Although I suppose this is heavy as well." He shook his head. "Maybe… maybe I shouldn't have done that. I kept saying my moral standing was higher than his, but…"

"You bastard" Cliff interrupted him, rolling over with the last strength he had in him and staring at his brother. "How could you. You're a disgrace to the Tannen name."

Marty looked at him for a second, then his eyes shot fire. "How _dare _you say things like that! You ruined Tannen Valley! You and Dad and all of our family got the entire town terrorized, got hundreds of innocents killed! It's not me who's a disgrace to the Tannen name, it's the Tannen name which is a disgrace to me!"

"Well spoken, Marty" Emmett complimented. "I think I've come to like you over the past few days, but the you who was always a McFly was my best friend, and he hadn't been tainted by the things you have. You don't deserve to be a Tannen."

Marty looked at Emmett and smiled. "Am I supposed to take that as a compliment?" he asked.

"That's what it's meant as" Emmett said, smiling back at Marty. He patted his friend on the back. "Even if you're not my Marty, I believe you have some potential. It's nice to get to know you."

"I suppose" Marty said. "Although seeing me shoot Cliff must, uh, not be as nice." He looked at his brother, who was now definitely dead. "I know it's not all that wrong, since it's Cliff and all, but it feels that way, you know?"

"I understand" Emmett said, sighing. "There are many things in my life that I'm not proud of either, and this is all going to get erased from history. I wish I could go back and erase my own mistakes the same way, but in many cases, it would just be too dangerous. Like how I broke up with my wife two days after we met." He sighed. "I know, bad comparison."

"I'd say" Marty said. "I get what you mean, though."

"I believe I owe you an apology, Mr. Tannen."

Marty looked up to see Jennifer approaching them. "Mrs. Parker?" he asked. "What do you want to apologize for?"

"For thinking you were just like the rest of your family" Jennifer said, simply. "You're not. And that's why I've decided to let you two free, on the condition that you promise to do your best to change Tannen Valley."

"I do my best?" Marty echoed. Emmett realized it the same time he did. "You're right! Cliff's dead, I think I saw Griff fall as well in that final struggle, so… I guess this means I'm in charge now!"

"Heavy?" Emmett asked.

"You bet" Marty replied, leaning against the bridge. "I'm kind of used to it, of course, considering the fact that I've been police chief for quite a while now, but actually replacing Cliff as leader of Tannen Valley?" He shook his head. "It's a weird thought."

"It is, but it's a thought you need to act upon right away" Emmett said. "I'm not sure what people might be out there that could claim to have the right to your position, or who'll oppose your killing of Cliff. I hope we can count on Mrs. Parker not revealing any of this."

"Oh, I won't" Jennifer ensured them. "Not until you've reformed town. That would be like shooting myself in the foot."

"Good" Emmett said. "Then all you have to do is get back to town and take over before any of Cliff's goons get a chance to do it. You can probably use Cliff's limo, now that he won't be able to use it himself anymore."

Marty managed a wry smile. "Guess you're right" he said. "All right, off to Tannen Valley… no, Hill Valley… we go. Off to change the world."

oooooooo

Before the day was out, Marty's final statement turned out to be right. He was changing the world, more than anyone could have imagined. Once getting back to Tannen Valley, he had immediately marched into Cliff's office and declared that the great leader had tragically perished during a shooting incident with some rebels over at Eastwood Ravine Bridge. His second message was that the 'traitors inside our regime' that were supposedly responsible for Cliff's death should be punished. Using his natural overweight over the subservient employees, he managed to convince them to track down most of Cliff's more radical associates. Many of them were brought to the prisons they had thrown many others in before the day was out.

"You know," Emmett told Marty, as he was watching over all of it with his friend, "this kind of reminds me of that future movie I once saw. It was called _Valkyrie_, and it dealt with the plot to kill Hitler."

Marty frowned. "I doubt you can compare Cliff to Hitler" he said. "He was bad, yeah, but he hadn't quite gone that bad – or at least, not yet."

"I know, but that's just what it seemed to me" Emmett said. "The resemblance is there, you know. Both situations deal with the leader of an evil regime getting killed – or, in their case, nearly killed – by one faction of that very regime that has become appalled by its horrific ways, and then claims the more radical faction was responsible to eliminate them."

"You don't think I'm doing the wrong thing, do you?" Marty asked. "I know this kind of stuff might not be what you're used to, but we can't just leave all those crooks running around unpunished."

"Oh, I'll agree with you on that" Emmett replied. "It is a strange thing to see _you_ do all this, but I suppose I'll just have to adjust to that thought. You're right – if you didn't do it, the situation could get far worse." He looked at Marty. "Say, to change the subject – is tomorrow your birthday?"

Marty blinked, startled. "Uh, yeah?" he said. "Why?"

"I was just wondering whether that event would have stayed the same between realities" Emmett replied. "It's hard to believe you're turning forty-eight tomorrow. Of course you're not the Marty I know, but you're still a version of him. I have a hard time imagining _any_ Marty to be above twenty, even after all that time travelling I've done."

"I understand" Marty said. "I don't suppose anyone will have a present for me tomorrow, but that's okay, because I have a lot of other things to do." He snapped his fingers, remembering something. "I do have a present for you, though."

"For me?" Emmett asked. "I know this whole mess started with my birthday, but that was in 1895 and I couldn't possibly…"

"Never mind that" Marty replied. "Just follow me."

Emmett nodded reluctantly, and started to follow his friend. He had no idea what Marty was up to now, but he trusted him enough by now to know that it would be something good. They walked through several corridors, through several hallways of which Emmett had no idea where they might lead and whom he'd never seen before. He knew the Courthouse was big in this reality, but he hadn't quite realized how grand it was until he saw it all here. They went over staircases, too, ever going down. Finally, when Emmett was about to ask how long it would take before they got finished with this, Marty suddenly opened the door and stepped back.

"This is it" he said, simply.

In front of him, Emmett saw his DeLorean. Not the one he had time travelled with, of course, but the one he had bought a few days ago. It was still in a similar condition, although Emmett could see there had been some work done on it already.

"I managed to track it down from the information you gave me" Marty said, grinning. "Cliff had it towed away. You told me your first time machine was a DeLorean and how you needed a car most of all to build a new one, so…" He gestured towards the car. "I'd say, have fun."

"Thank you, Marty" Emmett said, grinning broadly. "If you can get me the notes from my old home… some good technical equipment… it should work. It will work. It _must _work." He smiled at Marty. Suddenly, the past, just like the future, was not quite so hopeless anymore.


	15. Chapter 14

**Disclaimer: I don't own Back to the Future. Man, even though I can't really come up with new disclaimers, this one is _really_ getting old, isn't it?**

_Author's Note: And yes, another two-for-the-price-of-one deal here. We're on the eve of the final departure for the past, but before we can get there, Doc and Marty have a final discussion that shows that this guy, as nice as he might appear occasionally, is not really the Marty we know and love. So, please read and review! Constructive criticism is also always welcome. _

**Chapter Fourteen**

**Saturday, July 16, 2016  
>09:00 PM PDT<br>Tannen Valley, California**

Over the next few weeks, Emmett found himself be amazed at the speed of the reforms that were taking place in Tannen Valley. Jennifer and her group had been reluctant to support a Tannen at first, but even to them, it became evident that this Marty was different from his family. Marty genuinely wanted change, and he got it. One bill after the other was passed. Certainly, some were passed with some hesitancy, and Marty kept holding the reins of power tight, but they were passed in the end. Political prisoners had their processes re-examined, and in many case that resulted in a release. Tannen officials were given a thorough investigation to examine whether they were fit to stay in the new regime. Freedom of speech, which had never been formally abolished, was evident in Hill Valley once more. One could now freely insult the Tannen administration and only get a reprimand and perhaps, if you went too far, a bill. And condemning Cliff and his goons was more likely to be encouraged than condemned. It still wasn't perfect, but it was a lot of difference compared to the way it was before.

As for Emmett, he was having the time of his life. The laboratory Marty had provided for him more than suited his wishes and the speed with which technology he needed could be delivered never ceased to amaze him. His friend did everything he could, which considerably sped up the process. Within a month, Emmett had turned a normal old DeLorean into a nearly functioning time machine. After finishing the time circuits and creating a Fusion reactor – that process was hardest, especially considering how some technologies in this world ran behind their counterparts in Emmetts own – the time machine was finally ready for testing by mid-July.

But Emmett and Marty hadn't only been working apart on the time machine and the reform of Tannen Valley, respectively (a bill was running to return the name to 'Hill Valley', but it hadn't been formalized yet) – they had also been working together on investigation of the Tannen family's shady past. A lot of things were brought out in the open, but matters regarding time travel could naturally not be revealed to the public. Normally, when Marty would get done with his regular work at around 10 PM, he would come to visit Emmett, and they would both go to the secret archives, hidden in the underground place Marty had found the day before he rescued Emmett from getting executed. They would spend one or two hours there before retiring for the day. Although their time was limited, the amount of knowledge they managed to uncover was more than enough.

In this world, Biff Tannen had indeed been the one to visit the Tannens of this era, back on March 24th, 1920 – the day after Emmett's birth. He had shown up with baby Emmett and had told Driff, Marty and Cliff's great-grandfather and then the head of the Tannen family, all about time travel, the Browns and the McFly's. Using that information, the Tannen family had been able to convince a reluctant Emmett to pursue a life in inventing things that would benefit his family. After years of Tannen influence, Emmett had indeed become a Tannen – although, even more so than Marty, he had kept parts of his old character – and had perfected a mind-influencing device. Using it, the Tannens were able to gradually take control of Hill Valley.

Emmett figured that Biff must have been especially regretful for the failures he made the last time, since the amount of information about the future he had conveyed to his ancestors was mind-boggling. In fact, he wondered whether they were lucky the situation hadn't gotten even worse. Biff marrying Lorraine was enough of an alteration to the time stream already, but it could have been possible that neither of them – or George – would have been born at all in the new timeline, thanks to the indirect or direct influence of the Tannen family.

While Emmett and Marty kept studying the growth of Tannen influence in times past – and Marty grew gradually more disgusted of his family's ways – that influence was being undone in the present. The Parker group was openly negotiating with Marty and fully backed his reform plans (although there were dissenting voices who didn't think the reforms were radical enough, and most of the group was skeptical). Jennifer, though, was convinced of Marty's honesty, and even convinced her husband to come out in the open again. When Emmett learned she was married to Victor McFly, the alternate son of George McFly (born out of a short fling with a girl George had never heard from again) he couldn't help but smile. Some things turned out right no matter what reality you were in. Meanwhile, present-day Biff Tannen was being kept under close guard by the very same officers he had once installed, and although the old man seemed harmless, tired and worn-out as he was after a life of decadence, Emmett knew he would be happy when he was safely out of 2016. He also knew that one of the hardest tasks for Marty was to continuously ignore the messages his mother was sending him, demanding the release of 'your father' and denouncing him for what he was doing. Occasionally, the inventor wondered whether Marty would one day cave under the pressure and turn on him again.

Today was the sixteenth of July, and Emmett was finally putting the finishing touches on his installation of the time circuit display. It looked slightly different from the old version, considering the different technology that was available in 2016, but nevertheless, it, and the entire temporal machinery in the DeLorean, was still very much like the invention he had first tested that night at Lone Pine Mall and which had sent Einstein on the first trip through time ever made (although not chronologically, since that honor went to his own arrival in 1885). Emmett was sure that this version, despite a few glitches here and there, would work. And tomorrow, he was planning to test it.

As he was musing over what other parts of the time machine he could test without actually sending it up to eighty-eight, he was startled by a knock on the door. Marty entered and smiled at him. "Evening, Emmett" he said. "Giving your work a last look?"

"Pretty much, yeah" Emmett replied. "I hope I'll get some rest tonight. After all, tomorrow, I will resume time travelling, and I'll have the task to fix what your father wrought in 1920."

Marty nodded, understanding. "A hard task indeed" he said. "Although if the time machine doesn't work, you probably won't be taking off tomorrow."

"That's true" Emmett agreed. "But I'm confident that it will. I have spent several weeks on this, checked my calculations, done tests on the individual systems… it will work. Tomorrow will be the last day – or rather, the last morning – I'll spend in 2016. This version of 2016, I mean."

"That's what I came to talk to you about" Marty said, sitting down in one of the chairs Emmett had installed. Emmett made no protest against it – after all, it wouldn't make much sense for him to expect Tannen Valley's leader to ask for a seat, and the chair had been sent here by Marty himself. "You see, I was wondering what exactly you were planning to do."

Emmett frowned at that question. "Didn't I tell you? Biff – your father – kidnapped my younger self from the hospital and exchanged him for another baby, then brought me to your great-grandfather and gave him information about the future. My plan should simply be intercepting Biff at the hospital, ensure that my younger self stays where, he is, and rescue my family."

Marty frowned. "That sounds like a hard task for just one man" he said. "Sure, there's only one person you need to watch – but if alternate Dad planned for your appearance in 2016 and passed down instructions how to act against you, you can bet on it that he's prepared for you showing up in 1920, too."

Emmett frowned. "You think?" he said. "That information he gave your family was almost foolproof. If not for your intervention, I would have been killed. And he can't have counted on the Parker resistance movement, either. He's not going to count on me coming after him."

Marty shook his head. "I get what you mean" he said. "But you can't underestimate him. His first attempt failed, and if what I heard from you is right, then he's had, what, eight months to prepare for his second?"

"More like seven months, two weeks and one day" Emmett replied. "But you've got a decent point. I've been counting on the fact that all Tannens are dumb – no offence, Marty – but the Biff we met in 2016 was actually reasonably smart. Though I wouldn't know…" He frowned, and began to smirk. "Or were _you_ about to offer to come along with me?"

Marty grinned. "Am I that predictable?"

"Not extremely, but the way you put emphasis on the 'just one man' bit helped tip me off" Emmett replied. "I understand your feelings, Marty, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to say no. You can't come with me. It's too dangerous."

Marty's grin vanished. "What?" he exclaimed. "Why on earth would facing an alternate version of my father be dangerous? Or time travel? It's never hurt you before! That's a sloppy excuse to keep me out and you know it!"

Emmett shook his head. "I'm not trying to keep you out" he replied, softly. "If I could, I would have taken you along. But I can't. What might happen if we manage to repair the time stream? Would you be erased from existence? Or would you stay and replace your other self, meaning you might get new memories, but have old ones from this world you're stuck with forever?!"

"I could manage" Marty said. "The other me did, right? He grew up in a family that was considerably less happy than the one he eventually ended up in."

"I don't think you understand" Emmett said. "Even if you don't go through the erasure process, which I doubt since you have a different father – and it's painful, take that from your counterpart – you'll still have a drastically different life. You will have a wife and two kids, a career in rock music – do you even play the guitar?"

"No" Marty said. "But I'll have new memories, right?"

"Yes, but this is too radical a change for the new timeline to take!" Emmett exclaimed. "You are underestimating just how much will change. My Marty was able to cope because some things stayed the same: he had the same parents, though they were changed, and the same siblings, the same girlfriend, the same best friend. You would have to start from a clean slate, with two sets of memories going back longer and conflicting much more than those of my Marty did! It's just not possible for you to cope with this!"

At that, Marty stood up, and glared at Emmett menacingly in a you'll-do-what-you're-told-to-do way. "I think I can determine what I can cope with or not" he said, his tone of voice icily. "You just want to keep me out because you don't want to risk having to miss the other me! I'm just a mere error of the time stream to you, an issue that should be resolved as soon as possible!" His face was red with fury, and Emmett was nearly frightened at the temper his friend's alternate self possessed. "Emmett Lathrop Brown, as ruler of Tannen Valley I _demand _you to let me come along!"

"Marty…" Emmett tried.

"Don't 'Marty' me! That's Mr. Tannen to you! I understand what you're saying about living in a different timeline and maybe it would be hard, but it would be better than getting dissolved all together!"

"But that's the main point, you _would _be dissolved!" Emmett called out. He stared at Marty and took a deep breath. "If you stayed here, there are two options. One is that this timeline would vanish after I fix history, and you'd vanish along with it and be replaced by a new Marty, the Marty I know. You'll have never been, and thus you won't be able to experience erasure since you never existed in the first place. The second option is that this timeline lives on, so you won't get dissolved either. However, if we do it your way, you'll either get erased from existence in 1920 – which _will _be painful, since you were there up to that moment – or you will go along with me to 2016 and replace the other you, and get memories you don't know, with a family that you will have to get adjusted to. No one will be able to share the troubles you're going through. I can try, but I won't be of much help because I never experienced the same thing." He sighed, and placed a hand on Marty's shoulder. "Marty, this is for your own good. I don't want you to go insane."

Marty looked at Emmett, and sighed. "Perhaps you're right" he admitted, calming down. "I know you mean well, Emmett… but there's one issue you haven't addressed yet. What if I went along and we got back to the future, and there _is _another me already? You know, like how you haven't been erased?"

Emmett thought about that for a moment. "I've considered that matter for quite some time now" he said. "The only reason I can imagine for my non-erasure is that this reality is headed towards a paradox anyway, but that paradox should have occurred by now!"

"Perhaps you haven't been erased yet and the paradox hasn't occurred yet because God Himself knows you've got the ability to make things right" Marty commented. "I mean, what with the self-preservation effect you told me about, I don't think the universe _wants_ to explode."

Emmett smirked. "You may have a point there" he said. "I'll have to research this some more once I get back home."

He was about to turn to the DeLorean when Marty cleared his throat. "One more question, though" he said. "I think I understand now why you can't take me along. But you still can't do this on your own, Emmett. I know you're a great inventor and capable of a lot of things, but… you wouldn't want this to fail because of your own insistence to do this alone, would you?"

Emmett shook his head. "No" he replied. "But I wouldn't know who to ask."

"Why, me of course" Marty said, grinning. "The me from the other world. You once told me that all history from 1920 has been altered and what happened before that stayed the same. That's why you had those photographs around, and why the ravine's still Eastwood though I never went back to fall in. You need that me, Emmett, the me who went back to 1885 to supposedly fall into the ravine. You'll need him to fix things."

Emmett frowned. "That might not be a bad idea" he allowed. "Although it does sound extremely dangerous. If I mess with the events from 1885…"

"Well, it was your last time trip together, wasn't it?" Marty asked. "There shouldn't be too much to mess up, and you could just tell me, uh, him, what to do when you bring him back to 1885." He stared at Emmett, then got up and walked towards the door. "I'll leave you here with your thoughts, for the time being. Good night, Emmett."

"Good night, Marty" Emmett greeted, staring after his friend as he headed off. Marty did have a point. He couldn't do this on his own. And perhaps, if he took the Marty from 1885, history could still stay more or less the same. It was the last time trip he'd made together with Marty, after all.

The last time trip…

Emmett shook his head. No time to get all nostalgic or continue speculations about alterations of history. It was time to go to bed. Tomorrow, he would finally get the chance to change history, meet Clara and the kids again, and teach Biff a lesson… but tomorrow could wait. Emmett Brown would wait for today to pass, first. Yawning, he turned off the lights in his laboratory, and walked through the hallways towards his living quarters. It was time to go to bed.


	16. Chapter 15

**Disclaimer: I don't own Back to the Future. **

_Author's Note: Here's another update, as you can see, and I decided to upload them in pairs once more. In this, Doc and Alternate Marty say their goodbyes after the test of the time machine. I could say more, but it would be silly to tell you all about it when the intent here is that you _read_ it. So here you go.  
><em>

**Chapter Fifteen**

**Sunday, July 17, 2016  
>06:00 AM PDT<br>Tannen Valley, California**

Emmett Brown smiled at his friend, Martin David Tannen, as they were gathered at the abandoned Twin Pines Mall. It was Emmett who had insisted on doing the first time travel experiment of his new DeLorean here, and Marty had agreed, both for the reason Emmett cited – nostalgia – as well as the fact that there would be no one there at this time of day. Of course, if this experiment worked, this reality would be erased within the hour and no one would remember any of it anymore, so by that point it would be irrelevant whether anyone had seen them. Until he was absolutely sure whether the experiment would work, however, Emmett preferred to have absolute safety.

"How are you doing, Marty?" Emmett asked his friend, who looked surprisingly alert at this early hour. He'd known this Marty was different, but the fact that he was used to getting up early came as a shock to the seventy-five-year-old anyway, given the fact that he was used to Marty sleeping in until at least nine-thirty A.M. in the weekend.

"Pretty much all right, Emmett" Marty replied. For all that his alternate friend had preferred to be called Doc, Marty had never gotten the hang of it, and Emmett had eventually figured that it didn't matter all that much anyway.

"Very good" Emmett responded. "Now, I've put my clock in the DeLorean. I've got my watch right here, and it's synchronized with the clock. See?"

"Check, Emmett" Marty said.

"Okay, then all we have to do is get the DeLorean up to eighty-eight miles per hour, using the remote control system, and time travel should take place" Emmett said, smiling. "Too bad I can't use Einstein, but even if there was ever an alternate version of him in this timeline, he'd be long dead."

"I suppose I could have gone to look for another dog…" Marty speculated.

"That's all right, Marty" Emmett said. "I can test the machine fine without it, and frankly, I'm really eager to see my wife and kids again."

"I understand" Marty said, sighing. "I just wish I could come too. See the wonders of time travel. Visit the past, visit your world…"

"I've explained why it's impossible" Emmett replied. "But I _will_ go to 1885 before I head to 1920. You were right last night Marty – I really can't risk doing this on my own. After seeing all this, I won't allow myself to underestimate Biff Tannen anymore – or at least, the 2016 version of him." He sighed. "Anyway, we should really be getting on with this."

He took the remote, and started driving the DeLorean backwards with it. He then used the remote to accelerate the car, and eventually allowed it to shoot out and drive over the parking lot at accelerating speeds. Emmett and Marty took care not to stand in the path of the time machine this time around – neither of them wanted to risk it if something went wrong. In fact, Emmett was kind of wondering what his original self had been thinking when he had instructed Marty to stand in the path of the time machine. He _had_ done something similar when he first tested the time train… but then, he had just been so incredibly excited that it seemed natural to him to do so. He supposed that it had been the same case then. Of course, he had been forced to replicate the original experiment in _his_ timeline, so he hadn't had a choice in the matter then.

He shook his head, shrugging all the thoughts off, and focused on the DeLorean. It was now nearing eighty-eight and let out familiar flashes of light. Emmett took a deep breath and stepped forwards just as the time machine was covered with light and a sonic boom sounded. It vanished into the future, leaving fire trails behind.

"It worked!" Emmett exclaimed joyfully. "This is _exactly_ what happened in 1985 – and in 1894! We can traverse time again!"

"Wow" Marty muttered, staring at the place the time machine had been with open mouth. "Heavy." He stared at Emmett. "Where did it go?"

"I think what you mean is '_when _did it go'," Emmett said, cheerfully. "The time machine went to 6:04 AM, so we'll catch up with it in one minute and forty-one seconds."

"Heavy" Marty repeated. He looked up at Emmett. "Can I go over for a second?"

"Just keep an eye on the time" Emmett replied. "You wouldn't want to get run over."

Marty shivered. "Right" he muttered, as he made his way over to the fire trails. They were still burning, although Marty saw the fire was slowly beginning to die out. "Does the car always leave these trails behind whenever it goes through time?" he asked, looking up at Emmett.

"Every single time" the inventor confirmed. "And you'll have to watch out around it when it comes back, too – it'll be frozen all over and exhaust steam. When I took the original DeLorean to 2015, I made some efforts to reduce that effect."

Marty nodded. "I'd offer you the chance to do the same now, but I guess you want to leave right away, right?"

"That's correct" Emmett said. "Granted, I would be willing to wait a couple more minutes, but after that, I'd really like to depart. I've got everything I need – the car, a plan, papers to check the changes to history against – and I can't stay in 2016 forever. History needs to be repaired."

"I understand" Marty replied. "I just wish there was some other way, though. I like having you around."

"I kind of liked meeting you, too" Emmett said, sighing. "This version of you, I mean. Of course, I already knew the regular you." He looked at his watch. "Great Scott! We've got ten more seconds to go!"

Marty rapidly got out of the way, and just in time, too. He had barely reached the place where Emmett was standing when triple sonic booms shattered and the time machine re-emerged. As Marty and Emmett looked at it, they saw it was indeed frozen all over. "Looks like you were right" Marty muttered, under his breath.

"Indeed" Emmett confirmed. "Let's look inside." He cautiously walked over to the DeLorean, being careful to avoid the steam it vented off. When he was certain everything was all right, he used his foot to push up the gull-wing door. Inside was his clock, still just as fine as it had been when he put it inside. One look at the difference between it and his watch told him the test had succeeded completely.

"Success" he whispered, amazed. "It works! It really works! Come on inside, I'll show you!"

Marty smirked, and walked over to the other side of the DeLorean. Emmett was just turning the time circuits on when he heard a yelp. "I told you it was frozen" he said, grinning.

"Must've forgotten" Marty replied. "Jeez, you weren't kidding!"

"What gave you the idea I was?" Emmett replied, as Marty used the same method he'd just deployed to open his door. "Look, here are the time circuits. As you can see, the Destination Time is still 6:04 AM, the Present Time is 6:05 AM, and the Last Time Departed is 6:02 AM." He shook his head. "If I get out of this all right, I might consider adding seconds to that. It gives a more precise view."

"I think this works fine" Marty said, dazed. "This is heavy. So, you can go anywhere in time with this thing?"

"Anywhere between January 1st, zero AD – or more accurately, one AD or one BC, I'm not really sure – and December 31st, 9999 AD" Emmett replied. "I never thought a widening of those limits was necessary, and for this machine, I only need a select couple of dates anyway."

"Such as March 24th 1920" Marty said.

"And September 1885 of course" Emmett replied. "I was wondering whether I should go to the sixth or the seventh, considering the state of my younger self and yours on that day and what would happen if we, for some reason, didn't return. I eventually decided to pick the seventh – your counterpart should be more slightly more aware of my situation by then, and he won't have to keep his secret about this adventure for as long."

Marty nodded. "I suppose I could give you some of those mind influencers your other self made to use on him – me to make sure he doesn't remember, but I guess you wouldn't like to use them for ethical reasons" he said.

"That's right, and I'm not sure whether it would work either" Emmett responded. "After all, once we succeed in our mission, this whole reality will be erased and so will those devices. And I can't wipe your brain with an invention that doesn't exist." He shook his head. "Anyway, time to set the destination time." He put in September 7th, 1885, 6AM. "I'd offer you a short ride, but I'm not sure what purpose that would serve."

"I wouldn't know either" Marty muttered. "Well, at least I've still got your papers. I could try to build another one of these time machines."

"You could" Emmett agreed. "But I'm not sure you could manage, and whether or not you should hire any scientists for it… who knows what they might do with the knowledge."

"Yeah, I think I've gotten the idea" Marty said, smiling. "Time travel really is something to handle responsibly, isn't it?"

"It definitely is" Emmett said. "Your father gave us the clear example what happens when this machine falls into the wrong hands – twice – and we can't afford to repeat that." He stared at Marty, as they stepped out of the DeLorean. "Well…"

"Guess that's it" Marty muttered.

"Not entirely" Emmett corrected him. "I still need to collect trash for my journey to 1885. Would you like to help me with that?"

"No need" Marty said. "I made sure the trash cans weren't cleaned last night, and there's one right over there. All you have to do is walk over and collect all the cans and banana peels you need."

"Ah, now that's convenient" Emmett said. "Thanks, Marty!" He walked over to the trash can.

"It's okay" Marty said, shrugging. "The least – and the last – I could do for a friend."

Emmett sighed, as he pushed all the trash into the Fusion generator. Such devices were more common in this alternate 2016 than they were in the real one, where they hadn't yet been invented, or at least not perfected. He supposed that some of what the Tannens had done had been for good rather than for evil… although he didn't like the way they'd deployed it.

"I'm sorry I have to leave, Marty" he whispered, staring at the ground absent-mindedly. "It was nice getting to know you and I will always treasure the time I've spent with you, despite the fact that it was in an alternate reality. But…" He sighed. "There is no other way."

Marty smiled faintly. "Well, you'll have the other me" he said. "You could always hang out with him in 1985. You may say that you like having moved to the Nineteenth Century, but…"

The forty-eight-year-old remained silent, causing Emmett to frown. "What are you implying?" he asked.

"That you might want to think about moving back, Emmett" Marty said. "I can't guess what kind of relationship you had with the other me, although I'm sure it was different from what you and I had in the past few weeks. But despite that, I can be sure of one thing – that you miss him. He was your friend, your only friend, before you met this Clara woman in the Old West, and now you're ninety years apart."

"Slightly more, even" Emmett said, sighing.

"I know" Marty said. "But it doesn't have to be that way. The future is whatever you make it, right? And if you want to move back home…"

"Clara won't agree with that" Emmett said. "She likes visiting the future, but too much of it makes her nervous. Moving to 1985 is something I can't expose her or the kids to. And Marty doesn't need me in his life. He – you – has become a successful musician. Why would he want to spend time with a childhood memory like me?"

"Because you're friends" Marty said. "You told me you saved each others lives so many times. He won't tell you because he thinks you're happy in the past and you are, but wouldn't you be much happier if you were in the same time period again? To him, it's more like he lost you anyway, after so many times when he almost did, and he knows intellectually that _you're _alive and well, but maybe he's not all that well… and he just won't speak up about it when you visit him."

Emmett sighed, and shook his head. "You don't know" he muttered. "You're from a completely different reality. You have no idea what is going on in our world."

"Maybe I don't have the complete picture" Marty said. "But I can guess what's happening. And you could at least try to find out what the other me thinks about it. At worst, you get a 'no', and that won't be the end of the world. Didn't you tell me that if you put your mind to it, you…"

"I know, I could accomplish anything" Emmett said, interrupting his friend. "But you just don't understand. I…" He sighed, staring at Marty. "I'll think about it, okay? That's all I can promise."

"I suppose it's got to be enough" Marty said. He hugged the man who had helped him get back on a good path, away from all the vices he'd committed in his youth, and who had been his friend. Emmett smiled at him, and ruffled Marty's hair. He did kind of miss the young boy who had always eagerly participated in his experiments, who had always been kind to him, who had rarely ever judged him, who had…

Well, never mind that right now. Emmett pulled himself loose from the embrace and entered the DeLorean, while Marty shut the gull-wing door on the other side. "Goodbye" he said.

"Goodbye" Marty replied.

The time machine slowly accelerated across the parking lot, away from Emmett's lifelong friend. It came to a halt at the other side of the lot. Emmett stared around to see the Twin Pines Mall sign once more reminding him how wrong this world was.

"Things have to change" he muttered, under his breath. "And they'll change now."

He shifted the DeLorean into gear and accelerated across the parking lot. The speed quickly passed sixty miles per hour, and Emmett could barely keep track of the way the numbers kept climbing ever swifter. He passed Marty at eighty-two, and smiled at his friend for one last time. Then, he focused on the windshield as the DeLorean hit eighty-eight miles per hour. The flux capacitor lit up, there was a familiar sparkle of electricity, and a few seconds later, the machine broke the time barrier and vanished from Tannen Valley.


	17. Chapter 16

**Disclaimer: I don't own Back to the Future. **

_Author's Note: And here's the second update. It sends us off to a new time period! Two of them, in fact, and this is the start of what I'll call the second segment of the story, with the first being in 2016. As for what happens next, you'll just have to wait and see. And read, of course. Hm, I sound rather lackluster, don't I? I'm sorry, but I'm not sure what else to say. Read and review, people! It's very much appreciated!  
><em>

**Chapter Sixteen**

**Monday, September 7, 1885  
>06:25 AM PDT<br>A few miles outside of  
>Hill Valley, California<strong>

"Marty?"

"Hmm…"

"Marty? Wake up."

The teen groaned and rolled over to his side. Why did Doc have to wake him now? He opened his left eye halfway and winced. It was barely dawn. Couldn't he just have a little more time to rest? Today was gonna be hard enough without getting up early…

"Marty, please," the inventor insisted. "If you don't wake up now, I'm afraid I'm going to have to resort to more drastic measures. Such as emptying a water bucket over your head."

That got Marty's attention. The seventeen-year-old groaned and sat up, sighing as he stared at Doc… and then blinked. The scientist was dressed in completely different attire than the sort Marty had last seen him in. Just yesterday, he had worn a long 19th Century coat and a hat, but now, he was dressed in a strange combination of sparkling clothes that could only be from the future. "What's the matter, Doc?" he asked. "Where did you get those clothes from? We're going back to 1985, not _twenty_-eighty-five."

"I know the clothes are inaccurate" Doc said. "I just didn't remember to change because I was so excited the time machine worked. I've got proper Prohibition Era clothes in the back of the DeLorean, though."

"Prohibition era?" Marty repeated, scrambling to his feet. "What's going on here? Did you lose your mind?"

Doc sighed. "If only that were it" he muttered. "Marty, I'm not sure how to tell you, but I'm not the Emmett Brown you know. That man is still in the Palace Saloon, miles away from here."

"The saloon?" Marty said, dazed. He took his gun belt from the ground and looked at the campsite, which still appeared to be the same as yesterday. "What on earth would you be doing there?"

"Long story" Doc said. "I'll explain it once we get to 1920."

"1920?" Marty protested. "But what would we want to do there?"

"We need to stop Biff Tannen" Doc replied. "Listen, Marty. I'm from the future. I was on a trip to the _further_ future which I'll explain to you later when Biff stole my time machine and altered history from 1920 on. This was the only place I could go to in order to get the Marty McFly I knew to assist me."

Marty stared at him. "I'm not sure I understand."

"We'll solve that problem later" Doc said, smiling broadly. "For now, we'll just have to get to 1920. We need to leave early so that I can return you after we left, but in time for you to participate in the events of today."

Marty frowned, once more taking in Doc's futuristic attire. "What events?"

"You'll find out" Doc said. "Anyway, you need to come with me now. I'll explain everything once we are in 1920."

"One more question, though" Marty interrupted. "You're saying we need to go to 1920… but how do we get there? I thought you wanted to destroy the time machine after we got back home, so if you're really from the future…"

"It's complicated" Doc said. "But that, too, is a matter I'll explain to you later. Come on, we've got a mission to accomplish!"

oooooooo

After his short explanation, Marty hadn't asked any more questions while they walked to the car, which allowed Doc to focus on his task. He knew that they needed to eliminate Biff as a threat and rescue Clara and the boys, and preferably simultaneously, because he knew Biff wouldn't like it if they thwarted his plans and might take out his aggression on his hostages. They needed a plan.

The inventor continued to speculate about his ideas as he took the time machine up in the sky and accelerated to eighty-eight miles per hour. Once again, the DeLorean broke the time barrier swiftly and they entered Prohibition Era Hill Valley. Doc carefully inspected the time machine from within to ensure that it wasn't fading because of his abduction of Marty, and then landed it in the Hill Valley Park.

"So, this is 1920?" Marty asked, putting on the 1920s clothes Doc had given him. He had been quiet the entire ride, but now that his friend wasn't focused on driving anymore, it looked like his array of questions was about to explode.

"March 24th, 1920" Doc confirmed. "7:30 AM."

"Interesting" Marty muttered. "Wasn't this the year you were born? March 23rd, right? That should be… yesterday." He leaned back, shaking his head as it sank in. "Doc, what the hell are we _doing_ here?"

"We're here to stop Biff Tannen" Doc said. "Listen, Marty, I know you can't do anything without an explanation, but I can't tell you too much about the future. No man should know too much about his own destiny, after all."

Marty snorted. "I doubt it's possible _not_ to give anything away, Doc" he said. "And you've already given me some hints anyway – your strange clothes, that Last Time Departed saying July 2016 – if you don't tell me anything I'm only going to keep pressing you until you do. Now, what is going on here and what does Biff have to do with it?"

Doc sighed. "Marty, I don't know how to tell you this, but our… quest to return to the future tomorrow… or rather, tomorrow in the time period I took you from… will not turn out quite the way you and I expected it to."

"What?" Marty interrupted. "Why?"

"You know how I feel about Clara?" Doc asked. Marty nodded. "Well, when you fell asleep last night, I went over to Clara's cabin and blurted out the truth. She didn't believe me and broke up with me. Naturally, I was devastated."

"I understand" Marty said. "But wouldn't that be helpful in getting back to the future? There is nothing left for you in 1885, right?"

"That's true" Doc agreed. "But once we got on the train and started accelerating it after an incident with Buford Tannen in the Square… long story… Clara showed up. She had changed her mind and told me she loved me. I ended up having to go back for her, we had a couple of accidents…" He shrugged. "You were able to save us from falling to our deaths, but you had to go to the future alone."

"That's awful" Marty muttered. "But what does that have to do with all this?"

"In the time period that followed, Clara and I got married" Doc said. "We had two sons – Jules and Verne – and I built a time travelling train to get us out of the Old West."

"You had kids?" Marty let out a half-hearted laugh. "That's… odd."

"Think about how it felt for me!" Doc said, smirking. "Anyway. I finished the train in 1894 – as a result, I'm over nine years older than the Doc Brown you know – and Clara and I used it various times. When we travelled to 2016, however, Biff Tannen showed up." He sighed and shook his head. "I never should have left him be after that almanac incident. He knew about the time machine, and must have wanted revenge."

"What did he do?" Marty asked.

"He kidnapped Clara and the boys and took the time machine back to the past" Doc replied. "I was testing this DeLorean at the time – it had been a birthday present for me."

"Quite a present" Marty said, whistling.

"Indeed" Doc replied. "To make a long story short, I ended up in a reality where I had been abducted as a baby, replaced by an unknown baby that subsequently became Emmett Brown, and raised by the Tannens. The other me had built inventions for them and as a result, the Tannen family could take over Hill Valley. Biff even managed to meet your mother the same way your mother and father met in the old timeline."

Marty gasped. "So… I didn't exist?" he asked, weakly.

"Oh, you did exist" Doc said. "Or rather, a Tannen version of you. I know what you're going to say – if Biff and your mother could end up together, why was it so vital to get George and her back together in 1955?" Marty nodded. "Well, though this Tannen was you in many ways, he was not you in terms of DNA, and it might very well have been possible that even if your actions in 1955, heaven forbid, had caused Biff to end up with your mother and a Marty Tannen had been born, you'd still be erased, because this person might look like you, but he wasn't you. In fact, if you wanted to ensure your own birth, it might be better for a close relative, who would naturally share your father's genes to some extent, to end up with your mother than a random person like Biff. Perhaps Lorraine's romantic interest in you was even aided by the self-preservation effect of the space-time continuum to ensure that someone having McFly genes would still end up with her, seeing that you, after your father, would be the best bet genetically for courting your mother and producing you… never mind the fact that you had little interest in _that_."

"Heavy" Marty muttered, making a face.

"Indeed" Doc responded. "So anyway, I managed to befriend your sort-of-counterpart and he gave me the tools to build a time machine out of my DeLorean. I finished it after six weeks, and took it back to 1885 to fetch you. Since this time period was before 1920, I knew you should still be there in the circumstances that I remembered because Biff's actions in 1920 could not have influenced what happened _before_ that. Your other self advised me to take you along, because I couldn't stop Biff alone."

Marty nodded, taking it all in. "So basically, we're here to stop Biff Tannen from kidnapping your younger self?" he asked.

"And preventing him from giving the Tannens of this time period future information, and rescuing my family" Doc summed up. "But yes, the first thing we need to do is prevent that kidnapping. I was thinking you might be good for that task."

"Why me?" Marty called out.

"Because I'm going to look for the train" Doc explained. "I know what it looks like, after all – though I suppose it would be easy enough to describe, it's not exactly conventional. Anyway, I've got some walkie-talkies with me, so you can contact me if you need me."

Marty nodded again. "Heavy" he muttered. "So, when's this crazy stunt going to start?"

Doc opened the gull-wing door on his side of the DeLorean. "Immediately after we park this thing and lock it tight, then disguise is as well as we can" he replied. "The information I got from the alternate future tells me Biff showed up at nine AM at the Tannen house, carrying the younger version of me."

Marty blinked. "But wouldn't it be easier for me to head there instead?" he asked. "That way, we know for sure Biff's been past already. If your parents didn't notice you were different, how could I know?"

"Because it should be easier for you to get into a hospital than to lurk around the Tannen house for some time and not get caught" Doc replied. "Besides, at the hospital, there are liable to be many people, so if Biff finds you, he won't dare to do anything against you."

"You think he would otherwise?" Marty asked, gulping.

Doc sighed. "This Biff has failed on one mission to the past already. He's desperate, and we can't know what he will or won't do. But considering the information he gave his family about me, I wouldn't put it past him to try to kill you."

Marty shook his head. "This is nuts" he muttered. "And that's _our_ world's Biff, right?"

"Right" Doc agreed, sighing. "Once we get this reality back to the world we remember it, I'm going to have a serious look at what to do with Biff. He's too dangerous to be left in possession of such information."

"Tell me about it" Marty muttered.

Doc then drove the car over to a tree. They got out, and started collecting tree branches for the work on covering the time machine. Marty soon found some, and though they had to take off a few branches from the trees themselves as well, the park's flora and fauna were still mostly undisturbed once the time machine was safely hidden.

"Good thing you didn't forget to take out the stuff you needed first" Marty quipped. "Otherwise, we'd have to dig the car up again."

"Well, I'm not that stupid" Doc said. "Here's your walkie-talkie, a description of how to get to the hospital, and a newspaper from the other world."

"'Martin Tannen Appointed Head of Police Force'?" Marty read. "Holy shit, is that… me?"

"The other you, yes" Doc said. "It's a paper from 1994. Your other self collected it for me. It's going to be your check to see if the timeline's changing."

"What's yours?" Marty questioned.

In response, Doc held up a paper dated February 11th, 1953. The heading was 'Emmett Tannen Awarded' and the subtitle read 'Local Inventor Receives Award For Human Mind Studies'. "It's about my other self's award for his mind influencer" Doc said. "Though at that time, the researchers were only aware of its ability to read minds rather than influence them, my local counterpart was awarded for it nevertheless."

"Cool" Marty muttered. "Although I guess it wasn't really, considering what came of it…"

"Indeed" Doc said. "And that's why we've got to fix history whatever the cost might be." He patted his friend on the shoulder. "We must succeed. Remember that. We can't leave the Tannens in control of Hill Valley!"

"Exactly" Marty said. He smiled at Doc and walked off, in the direction of the hospital. Doc stared after his friend and sighed, then took off to do his own part of the job.


	18. Chapter 17

**Disclaimer: I don't own BTTF, et cetera. **

_Author's Note: All right, a new update! Contains content. Which is of course obvious. But yeah, basically that's all.  
><em>

**_Chapter Seventeen_**

**Wednesday, March 24, 1920  
>08:10 AM PDT<br>Hill Valley, California**

To say that Marty entirely knew what he was doing when he was walking in the direction of Hill Valley Hospital was an overstatement. However, he did have a general idea. Doc had told him where to go and what to do there, so all he had to do was get in the hospital, track down Biff, and prevent him from kidnapping young Doc – or rather, Emmett.

It almost sounded easy.

Of course, Marty knew it wouldn't be easy. When Doc Brown and time travel were involved, things were never easy. His first time trip had been accidental, and it had cost him a week to get back home again. Then the second time trip had started the morning thereafter, intended as just a quick jaunt to 2015 to rescue his son from going to prison. Yeah right. That journey had taken him to an alternate 1985, to 1955, to 1885, and now to 1920. He could barely keep track of everything. At least in 1885 he had had a good night's rest. He was feeling rather hungry, though…

The teen shook it off as he approached the hospital. Never mind that, he would have to do his job first. He tugged some at the vest Doc had given him. It itched slightly, but he couldn't change that either. He needed these clothes so that Biff would not immediately realize who he was. Marty had thought that Biff, if he ever saw him, might think he was a McFly ancestor and not pay any further attention, but Doc seemed convinced that this Biff was smarter than they would have otherwise expected him to be.

After turning around a corner, Marty suddenly found himself in front of Hill Valley Hospital 1920. It was still a small building in this time period, having only two floors – the one he knew in 1985 had five floors after a drastic remodeling in 1973. It was a different building, but this was the one he had been born in, or rather, the one he would be born in. It was also the building little Emmett was in right now.

After looking around to make sure Biff wasn't approaching, Marty headed into the hospital. There were various nurses around and the occasional doctor, and some fretting patients. Marty decided to ignore them and walked up to the reception. Only then he realized that he didn't know what to do. Certainly, he knew to wait for Biff, but maybe Biff was already there? Or he'd been here already? Marty knew that thought wasn't all that realistic – Doc had told him Biff had visited the Tannen home with baby Emmett at 9 AM, and an old man couldn't just walk around Hill Valley with a little baby for so long without getting strange looks. Of course, Biff would most likely be indifferent to whoever saw him, but… never mind. Marty was here now, and he could hardly go on a wild goose chase all over town. No, it was better to operate on the assumption that Biff had yet to come.

But if Biff had yet to come, then Marty knew he might as well have to spend ten to twenty minutes waiting for him. And he couldn't do that right here in the open – Biff would notice him right away. And that was one thing Marty preferred to avoid – after all, you always have an advantage when your adversary doesn't know you're there.

Instead of waiting, Marty headed up the stairs that were on the left side of the building. There was no escalator yet, but there was a clear sign reading 'Pregnancies Up'. The seventeen-year-old wasn't sure when this hospital dictated that pregnant women would have to leave their rooms, but he was sure it wasn't yet one morning after childbirth.

After encountering quite a few people on the way there, neither of whom paid him the slightest bit of attention, Marty finally arrived at the main pregnancy room. The women in it paid him curious glances, but Marty ignored them, instead focusing on the signs at their beds. Smith. Zemeckis. Lewis. Gale. Brown.

Marty turned to the last one and walked over cautiously. A woman was asleep in her bed, but a man was sitting next to her bed and staring at Marty with an unreadable expression. The teenager softly gasped. This man resembled Doc closely. The same eye color, the same face shape, a slightly darker hair color than young Doc's blonde but still similar… though the man was no duplicate, like his own father had been of his grandfather and his son would be of him, there was no doubt that this was Doc Brown's Dad.

"Uh, hi" Marty said, unsure what to do. "Um, you've become a father?"

"Well, obviously" Doc's father said, frowning. "What else do you think I'm doing here? Who are you, anyway?"

"I'm, uh, Harry Callahan" Marty replied. "And you're…"

"Fried-Frederick Brown" Doc's father said, correcting himself. "Sorry, we haven't changed our name too long ago and I'm still used to the one I had in the old country. What do you want?" The tone was still relatively cordial, but the words were anything but.

Marty took a step back. "Nothing!" he exclaimed. "I'm, uh, just looking around… for my mother… she's supposed to be in here somewhere, but I can't find her."

"Well, I haven't seen anyone named Callahan around today" Frederick said, shrugging. "But I've been here all night and have only been out occasionally to visit the toilet or have something to eat, so I really wouldn't know either." He looked at a small crib behind the bed and smiled proudly. "That's our Emmett. Our new son."

"Congratulations" Marty said, somewhat uncomfortable. "Is he your first?"

Frederick nodded, sighing. "Our first, and presumably our last" he said. "Sarah and I have been married for nine years now, and Emmett is our only child. We were lucky to have him at all." He sighed, then smiled faintly. "But now we've got a son, at last. An actual child. I still can't believe it."

"I guess" Marty said. "Must have been quite an experience for you."

"Oh, you bet" Frederick agreed, smiling. "Sarah went into labor just yesterday afternoon, and it took seven long hours before Emmett was born at 10:50 PM last night. For some time, we were afraid he wouldn't make it, but everything looks fine now." He yawned. "I should really get some sleep, but I promised Sarah that I would stay awake while she slept." He blinked. "Not to pry into your affairs, but shouldn't you be leaving? You won't find your mom if you keep talking to me."

"Um, yeah, you're probably right" Marty replied. "See you around." He awkwardly wandered off into the hallway, thinking about what he could possibly do. He knew there was no other option but to wait, but he didn't really like that idea. Well, at least a 1920s hospital was a different form of boring than the Old West was.

As he looked around for a good place to hide, he soon found a shut door. He put his eye against the key hole and was relieved to notice there was no one inside. He headed inside and discovered the room was, in fact, a storage room of some sorts. Well, nothing to do about that. With a little luck, this would be a place nobody would notice him. He made sure not to close the door entirely, leaving a little open area for light to come through and so that he could look out on the hallway. Then, he sat down on the ground, and leaned against the wall.

A doctor came by. A half minute later, a nurse walked past. Then, nobody came past anymore and Marty felt himself growing bored – and tired. Sure, he'd had a good night's rest last night, but Doc _had_ woken him up at six-thirty. Not to mention the whole complicated time trip that was messing with his brain. He could at least try to catch some rest, couldn't he?

Marty leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. He wasn't really going to sleep, he was just relaxing a bit. He still had his eyes half-open, so he could still see everyone coming past. That should be enough. However, his eyes kept slipping tighter and his brain was emptying. There was a lot to think about, yeah, but he couldn't figure much of that out right now. There was thus nothing to keep him from getting bored. He sighed, and resigned himself to the inevitable. Within a few moments, he was entering a light but steady sleep.

oooooooo

Marty wasn't sure how long he'd slept. He would guess it hadn't been much more than ten minutes, though, but eventually, when he woke up, he heard a familiar voice. Biff's voice. Startled, the teenager sat up and peeked out of the door.

Indeed, walking through the hallway carrying a small baby was none other than Biff Tannen. The elderly man looked slightly better than the last time Marty had seen him, no longer having that silly cane of his around. That didn't prevent the others in the hospital from giving Biff and the baby odd glares, which Biff rapidly silenced by simply glaring back. Marty tried to see who the baby was, but he couldn't decipher any characteristics. He was sure it wasn't Emmett, though.

After the old man had moved past, Marty found himself debating what to do. Could he go after him? Should he go after him? Or should he simply wait until Biff got back and then take the baby from him somehow? Marty shook his head. It was best not to risk on one chance – he'd have to follow Biff, stay on his trail and prevent his abduction of young Emmett. If Doc's father was still in the room, maybe he could help as well.

The seventeen-year-old stretched, yawned, and then opened the door and started cautiously following Biff, attracting odd glares. It didn't take long until he saw Tannen moving into the pregnancy room. As Marty looked past him, he could see it was empty – all of the women had left, and Doc's parents were also no longer there. The soft sound of wailing that was coming from the crib behind Doc's mom's bed made it obvious, though, that young Emmett was still around.

Marty slowly began to panic. He couldn't let this happen! For a moment, he considered rushing into the room and closing the door behind them. Then, he remembered what Doc had said – this Biff was smarter than the one they were familiar with. They couldn't know what he would do against them. Marty shook his head. There was a better option anyway. He would not stop Biff – he would make sure Biff _was _stopped.

With that in mind, he headed into the doctor's chamber, which was right next to the pregnancy room. Inside, however, was not just a doctor – with him were Frederick Brown and Sarah Lathrop Brown.


	19. Chapter 18

**Disclaimer: I don't own Back to the Future. **

_Author's Note: Latest chapter, detailing stuff that isn't all that well-written or deep but hey, some scenes call for deep psychological considerations, while others... don't. So I hope you enjoy anyway, please read and review!  
><em>

_**Chapter Eighteen**_

**Wednesday, March 24, 1920  
>08:40 AM PDT<br>Hill Valley, California**

Marty blinked at the sight of Doc's parents, who looked back at him. It was still an odd sight to see two people who had died long before he was even born. He didn't know much about Doc's ancestry, but he knew the Browns had been rich. They had to have been to buy a mansion like the one Doc lived in when he was in 1955. Also, Doc had told him a lot about his past when he went to 1955 the second time, like how he had become a scientist at age eleven after reading Jules Verne, and how his father's family hadn't come to Hill Valley until 1908, then being the Von Braun's. Frederick Brown – formerly Friedrich von Braun – had obvious German heritage, speaking with a clear accent that Marty had had a little trouble to make out when they met earlier. Doc's mother, on the other hand, didn't look German, although Marty figured that could be a mistake of his.

"Well, good morning" the doctor said. "What are you doing here, young gentleman?"

"I'm sorry for interrupting you," Marty said, his voice tempo rapidly increasing. "Mr. Brown, Mrs. Brown – there's someone kidnapping your baby!"

Doc's father frowned. "Really?" he said. "Who'd want to do something like that?"

"Bi – I don't know" Marty replied. "An older man. It's just that he's kidnapping your Emmett right now, and you have to get out of here to prevent it!"

"Is this true, young man?" Doc's mom asked. She shivered. "I can't believe this! We had to wait so long to have our little Emmett, and now, someone's trying to steal him away from us!"

"Relax, Sarah" Frederick said. "I'm sure everything will turn out fine. I'll have a look at this." He stood up and walked out of the room, approaching Biff. "Sir! Excuse me, sir!"

Marty rapidly rushed behind a cabinet as Doc's father walked up to Biff. "Pardon me, but is that our Emmett you're holding?"

Biff shook his head. "Oh no, Mister…"

"Brown" Frederick helpfully supplied.

"Brown" Biff repeated, smiling. "This is just a baby I needed to take from here for my niece. The little boy had to stay in this hospital for observation, so…" He pointed at the room. "Your little infant should be right there."

Frederick nodded. "I thought as much" he said. "Would you mind me having a look at your baby?"

"That's quite all right" Biff said, displaying a smile. "Here, see?"

Frederick looked at the baby, and nodded. "He looks a lot like our Emmett," he said, "but I've only known him for a few hours, and I wouldn't want to get you into trouble just because I'm hard at distinguishing babies, sir."

"That's all right" Biff ensured him. "I'll just be leaving now, and let's forget anything ever happened."

"You're probably right" Frederick said. "It's a rather wild story anyway. Kidnapping little babies…"

Marty winced, looking at how easily Biff was deceiving Doc's father. He knew he had to do something now, otherwise Doc would still grow up as a Tannen. In frustration, he looked over at Sarah, Doc's mother, who seemed to share his concerns. "I don't trust that man" she muttered. "I don't know why, but there's something about this whole case that gives me the shudders."

"Then why don't you go check it out?" Marty said. "I mean, ask him for proof that the baby he's holding isn't your Emmett?"

Sarah shrugged. "I don't want to make trouble" she said. "I shouldn't rely on such irrational thoughts anyway. And Fred knows what's best for me." She looked at him with a smile. "If you're so interested in our baby, why don't you walk up?"

Marty sighed. "It's really none of my business" he said. "I know I started the whole matter to begin with… but I can't stand to see him take a baby who might be your Emmett out of the hospital."

The doctor blinked. "Excuse me?" he said. "Did you say that man was taking a baby _out_ of the hospital?"

"Uh, yeah" Marty said. "What about it?"

The doctor shook his head. "That's illegal" he replied. "You can't take a baby out of the hospital, not without clear permission of the parents and the doctor in charge! We should take action immediately!" He got up and walked over, calling out to Biff. "Sir! Excuse me, sir!"

Biff turned. "Huh?" he said.

"You can't take this boy out of the hospital" the doctor told him. "We have strict rules about such things, and one of them dictates that no one can take a baby out of the hospital without consent of the parents or the doctor."

"But my niece really wants her little boy back" Biff said, trying to smile as nice as he could. "She'll go insane without seeing her child. And he's really all right, see?"

The doctor shook his head, taking the baby from Biff. "I'm sorry, sir, but we can't permit it right away. That just happens to be the rules. But don't worry, I'm sure we can arrange something. What's your niece's last name?"

"Uh.." Biff muttered.

"Never mind, I'll look at the baby" the doctor said. "We have a name tag, you see, and… wait. Does that say Emmett Brown?"

"What?" Frederick exclaimed. "Then it was our Emmett! How come I couldn't see that!"

"The name tag is hidden under some cloth, making it harder to see" the doctor said. "Sorry, Mr. Brown." He turned back to Biff, angrily. "What do you want with this child!"

"Um, well," Biff began, "I wouldn't… gosh, what's that!"

Marty winced at the apparent stupidity of the 1920'ers as they all turned to the direction Biff pointed at. Biff took the baby from the doctor and rapidly started rushing off with it. Marty immediately ran out of the doctor's room. He wasn't sure what to do, but had half a mind set on pursuing Biff already when his enemy, not looking where he was going, suddenly ran into a cart filled with clothes. He released Emmett upon impact, and as he fell back, the baby flew through the air.

"Emmett!" Sarah shrieked.

A stunned Marty managed to pull his senses together just enough to act. He surged forward and caught Emmett, saving his best friend from a premature death or handicap. He gawked, and stared with amazement at the younger version of his best friend. Emmett was about to cry, but stared back at Marty. Instead of crying, he giggled and smiled faintly.

"YOU!"

Marty looked up to see Biff, who had gotten up after his encounter with the cart and was staring at him. "What the hell are you doing here, McFly!"

"McFly?" Frederick said, stunned. "I thought you said your name was…"

"Never mind that" Marty muttered, as he saw Biff rapidly taking off. "We've got to stop Bi- uh, I mean your son's kidnapper!" He handed Emmett over to his mother, who accepted the baby with a grateful smile, and then ran off after his enemy.

Despite a certainty that he would easily manage to capture Biff, Marty saw little in terms of Tannens when he got to the bottom of the stairs. In fact, there was no sign anything was out of the ordinary. The doctor, who had rushed after him, was as bewildered as he was. "I'm sure that man went down here!" he exclaimed.

"So am I" Marty muttered. "He must've gotten out of the hospital. But where to?"

"I don't know" the doctor replied. "We must find him, though. Come on, I'll alert the authorities."

"That's not necessary" Marty said, remembering Doc's lectures about not messing up the past. "I'm sure everything will turn out fine. We don't need the intervention of the police."

The doctor frowned. "Are you sure?" he asked, skeptical.

"Positive" Marty said. "I've dealt with this guy before, and my, uh, my Dad and I are working together to deliver him to justice. We'd really like to capture him on our own, after all the trouble he's caused us."

"I can understand that," the doctor said, "though I'm not sure whether you should…"

"Everything will turn out fine" Marty ensured him. "Don't worry. We will find him." With that, he took off, walking out of the hospital and leaving the doctor bewildered.

Once he was out, Marty immediately activated his walkie-talkie. "Doc!" he exclaimed. "Come in, Doc!"

"Marty!" Doc replied. "What's the report?"

"I saved your younger self" Marty said. "However, Biff saw me and he managed to get away!"

"Great Scott!" Doc called out. "Marty, if he gets back to the time train with the knowledge that we're here, this could have disastrous repercussions for my family!"

"I know, Doc, you've told me" Marty replied, his tone of voice bored. "How's the work going in tracking them down, anyway?"

"Not a sign of the train yet" Doc said. "I picked up a detector from the alternate reality that should allow me to trace the kind of radio waves the train emits. They are unique to this era. I haven't had much luck, but if I just fine-tune it a little further…"

"Uh, interesting" Marty muttered. "Anyway, since Biff escaped from the authorities, he's probably going to his ancestors' house. Do you know where the Tannen family lives in this time period?"

"It should be on your description list" Doc said. "I wrote it on the back. They live in the poorer quarter of Hill Valley right now, because Driff has yet to make his money from his illegal alcohol dealing."

Marty frowned. "Biff's grandpa was an alcohol dealer?"

"One of the worst" Doc said. "The scourge of Hill Valley! But most of that is in his future right now. Anyway, you should be able to get over there pretty easy." He shook his head. "But we can't let Biff escape again. I'm afraid that I'll have to come with you."

"I thought you wanted to look for the train?" Marty asked.

"I did, but this is more necessary" Doc said, sighing. "Tell you what. I'll spend another ten minutes looking for the train, and then I'll head over to the address I gave you. I should be there in twenty minutes – try to detain Biff until then."

"Wait, how the heck am I supposed to do that!" Marty complained, just as Doc turned off the walkie-talkie. "Now Doc, wait a minute Doc, whoa Doc!" He sighed and shook his head. "This is just great" he muttered, as he started to walk in the direction of the Tannen house.


	20. Chapter 19

**Disclaimer: I don't own Back to the Future, not even on October 27th. **

_Author's Note: It's one of the Back to the Future days, so have another set of two chapters. I'm uploading them in pairs nowadays because they really are short. I guess when I was writing them I figured that I might go back to revise them later and rewrite two chapters so that they could be one, but I never bothered to do that, and it would be strange if I started now. And in this case, it's useful for showing you two perspectives. This chapter brings you Doc Brown; the next will feature Marty McFly. Enjoy!  
><em>

_**Chapter Nineteen**_

**Wednesday, March 24, 1920  
>08:50 AM PDT<br>Hill Valley, California**

Doc sighed, cutting off the connection with Marty. He didn't like having to leave the teen waiting for him, but he really wanted to find the time train. It had been so long since he had seen his family, and the wish to reunite had grown bigger and become more urgent ever since they had gotten back to 1920. There was no clue what Biff might do to them if he or Marty angered him enough. Doc shivered, and he once again went off to look for the locomotive.

He had, using the detector, managed to track down some of the train's radio waves, waves that should not be around in 1920 and were emitted from a device he had installed in 2019. The signals were clear, but occasionally became distorted and Doc had to wait for them to clear up again. Also, they were a bit vague. While they were able to tell him roughly where the train was (which was on the other end of town, so Doc had had to walk all the way there as well) they could not pinpoint the exact location, not without having satellites at their disposal that of course weren't there in the 1920 skies. What he did know now, was that that location was in the middle of a forest, and he was having a hard time finding the clearing where the train could be.

"Great Scott" he muttered to himself. "How hard can it be to find a flying steam train!" He fiddled with the detector again, transmitting signals this time that could be picked up by the radios on the train. If he was able to make this work…

Suddenly, the screen blinked. Doc's face lit up with a smile. "Finally" he mumbled. He quickly clarified the readings, which indicated just where the time machine was – at one of the many clearings in the forest, which he should be able to find now. He cautiously began to start walking in the direction of the signal, occasionally rechecking it to see whether he was getting closer. He was. He had to stop himself from rushing too much, but eventually, he could see the vague silhouette of something black in the distance.

"The train" he whispered, amazed. The device had worked, as it should. Grinning broadly, he rushed over and soon cleared his way past the last tree. Sure enough, there was the train, in all its glory. It was almost too easy.

It was. It was too easy. Biff had to have a trap out somewhere here. Doc frowned, and looked around. Nothing to be seen. No rope hanging from a tree that indicated a rack Biff would want to catch him under. Not even a rope on the ground which he could stumble over as a nuisance. Nothing. Doc frowned – was he _over_estimating Biff now? There's a thought he'd never imagined happening. He shook his head, and, after making sure there was nothing around that could in any way present a trap for him, he walked over to the train, and pressed his thumb to the plate. It lit up immediately. Red.

Doc gasped. This couldn't be happening! He had to get in! He had programmed the machine to automatically clear him whenever he headed inside, so he should be able to get in – should he? Unless…

The inventor sighed. Apparently, Biff _had_ set a trap for him. He had somehow managed to get the security controls rigged so that he would be excluded from entrance. Doc didn't know how he had managed to do it – probably, he had recruited Clara to help him, forcing her to go along lest he hurt Jules and Verne. Doc growled. This just made him hate Biff Tannen even more.

Wondering what to do, he walked over to the window. Perhaps, if he could reach out just enough, he could get in touch with Clara or the boys. If they were still inside, of course – he had underestimated Biff on the getting in part, so maybe his adversary had taken Clara and the boys with him to another place. Doc reached out, standing on his toes, and to his immense relief, he saw Clara, Jules and Verne, tied up but alive. Clara saw him, and squealed with delight. "Emmett!"

"Clara!" he yelled back. He'd barely heard her, and he had to shout for her to understand, but he hoped that it would do. "I can't get in!"

"Biff forced me to help him exclude you!" Clara shouted. "I'm sorry, Emmett, I couldn't…"

"Never mind that right now!" Doc exclaimed. "I know you didn't mean to – just help me get in, and we'll talk later!"

"How?" Clara called back.

Doc pondered that for a few seconds. How on earth could he ever get in from the inside, with his wife and kids tied up on their chairs, and with the door being locked? They couldn't untie themselves, and he could not get in to do it for them. He could perhaps throw a stone through the window, but the train's windows had been made of rather strong glass, and he preferred not to get his train damaged so much that it would have to stay in 1920 for a while for repairs. Plus, the kids were near these windows and Clara was on the other side, so the glass would probably hurt either of them…

Suddenly, a light bulb went on inside his mind. "Jules!" he called out. "Verne!"

"What, father?" Jules called back.

Doc figured this wasn't the time to correct his son on the whole father/Dad issue. "There's a cabinet just a foot or two from where you're sitting! Can you reach it?"

"My feet might just do the trick!" Jules called out. "But why?"

"There's a knife inside that might free you!" Doc shouted. "Try to open the cabinet!"

He waited for a while, and saw the intense looks on his son's face. A few moments later, as he stood on his toes again, he saw a relieved smile. "It's open!" Jules called out. "The knife's on the floor, though!"

"Try to grab it with your feet!" Doc shouted. "When you've got it, bring it up to your mouth and let it take it – the handle – from there!"

"Emmett!" Clara shouted, angrily. "That might hurt him!"

"I know, but there's no other option!" Doc called back. "Unless you want to face the consequences of an angry Biff when he comes back here! Marty told me he wasn't that happy about what he'd done to him!"

"Marty is here?" Clara called out.

"Long story!" Doc replied. "Just get Jules to get the knife up!"

Clara nodded reluctantly, and Doc saw Jules reach out for the knife and carefully take it up with his bound feet. Assisted by Verne, he managed to turn it around and move the handle over to his mouth. When he took it and held on to it, Doc smiled with relief.

"Good!" he called out. "Now, Jules, try to release your brother!"

"Excuse me, do you want our son to use a _knife_ with his _mouth_?"

Doc smiled apologetically. "It's the only way!" he shouted to his wife. "You don't want to be stuck in captivity for all eternity, do you?"

Clara sighed and shook her head. Doc then watched as Jules carefully tried to saw Verne's hands loose with the knife. After a few intense seconds, the bounds went loose, but Verne let out a yelp.

"What is it, Vernie?" Doc shouted.

"Jules cut into my hand!" Verne called back, looking at his father with a glint in his eyes that made Doc feel sorry for all what he had to let his kids go through. But there was no way back now.

"Don't worry, I'll take a look at it as soon as I get inside!" he called out. "Now, untie yourself and let me in!"

It took a minute or two more before Verne had managed to get himself loose, constantly struggling with the ropes. Eventually, however, the boy succeeded in releasing himself and half-stumbled over to the door. Doc smiled happily when it was opened. He ran up and hugged his youngest son.

"Good work, Verne!" he called out. "I'm proud of you. Now, let me see your hand."

Verne held out his wrist. "I think it's broken" he whispered, staring at Doc innocently.

"I doubt that's the case, Verne" Jules replied. "It was only a cut, after all. I didn't slice through your wrist altogether."

At the thought of that, Verne started to cry. While Clara shot an angry glare towards her elder son, Doc got out a handkerchief to comfort little Verne, then made his way over to a small cabinet where he got some plaster from. With it, he sealed Verne's wound. The young boy smiled faintly after he saw the bleeding had been stopped. "Thanks, Daddy" he whispered.

"That's all right, Vernie" Doc said, walking over to Jules and untying him. Luckily, knots weren't Biff's area of expertise, so Jules was free to walk around again in no time. Then, Doc moved over to his wife.

Clara smiled at him, looking adoringly. "I knew you'd pull it off, Emmett" she said. "I just knew it. I told Biff, but he wouldn't listen to me – said I'd better be off thinking of a marriage to one of his ancestors." She made a face. "Speaking of him, where did Biff go anyway?"

"As far as I know, he's still uptown after Marty has foiled his plan to kidnap my younger self" Doc said, taking the newspaper out of his pocket. His alternate self was still in there, complete with his mind-influencing invention. So that invention would still occur thirty-two years in the future, and he would still be a Tannen. But how could that be now that Marty and he had stopped the kidnapping? Or did the ripple move slowly?

He was distracted from the problem when Clara managed to take off her last bounds, stood up and hugged him. He smiled warmly at her and kissed her on the cheek. "It's so good to see you again" he said. "I've missed you…. the past few weeks."

Clara frowned. "The past few weeks?" she repeated. "So I guess you had to build a new time machine. How did that happen?"

"I'll tell you in a minute" Doc said, walking over to the controls. "Verne, close the door. Jules, take that paper from the ground. Everyone, please sit down. We've got a pick-up to made."

After everyone had obeyed his orders, Doc smirked and took the train up to the sky. Within a few minutes, they were on their way towards Hill Valley, and to be more specific, to the Tannen house.


	21. Chapter 20

**Disclaimer: I don't own Back to the Future. **

_Author's Note: So this is the next chapter. Features Driff Tannen, a character I made up but who doesn't really have character traits divergent from the other Tannens besides those necessary to make him fit into the 1920s. They're Tannens, they're not all that inclined to change. It's not all that great, but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway. Feel free to add constructive criticism. Please read and review!  
><em>

_**Chapter Twenty**_

**Wednesday, March 24, 1920  
>09:05 AM PDT<br>Hill Valley, California**

Marty sighed, as he was walking over to the Tannen house. He had no idea when Doc would come, or if Doc would even come in the near future – for all he knew, the inventor might simply stay with Clara and his supposed kids for a while once he found them, and forget about him. It didn't sound too plausible, but Marty knew there was a precedent for it – November 12th 1955, when he had been forced to wait for Doc's arrival to rescue him from the garage for hours. The inventor had eventually shown up just about a minute late.

The teen walked over to a few bushes next to the Tannen house after checking the window – he couldn't see anyone there, fortunately. He hid in the bushes and from there, he was about to start moving over to the side window when he saw Biff walk up.

The elderly bully might be in better shape than he was in 2015, the last time he saw old Biff (for Marty little over a week ago, for Biff himself almost a year ago), but he still didn't look too great. Every once in a while, he would stop to rub his leg or wince and place a hand on his shoulder. It was understandable, considering how he'd needed to run to evade Marty in the hospital. However, he did manage to walk up to the house eventually, and rang the bell.

After he and Biff had spent half a minute waiting a man opened the door, and Marty gasped. This fellow looked exactly like Biff – 1985 Biff, of course – except for a moustache. Even the guy himself was surprised at the resemblance. "Who are you?" he called out.

"Now, is that a nice way to greet your visitor?" Biff said. "You're Driff Tannen, right?"

"That's right" Driff said, twirling his moustache. "Son of Buford Tannen, fastest gun in the west. What's the matter? You family or something?"

"You could say so" Biff said cryptically. "I've got something to tell you, Driff. Can I come in?"

Driff looked skeptically. "Any reason you can't tell me on the porch?"

"It's a rather long story, and I'd prefer to sit down" Biff replied. "But don't worry. I'll be back out in just half an hour, and then you will have information you can use to become the most powerful man in Hill Valley."

Driff laughed. "And why should I believe that?" he asked.

"Isn't it worth the gamble?" Biff said. "I'm family, so why would I lie to you?"

Driff thought about that, then shook his head. "All right, come in. But I'm warning you, don't take too long. I've got a busy day ahead."

"I'll be back out before you know it" Biff said, as he followed Driff inside. Marty watched the door shut, then moved through the bushes and towards the house. He saw Driff lead Biff into the room, and winced. He had to stop Biff from giving his ancestor future information, or the world in 2016 would still be messed up.

The seventeen-year-old cautiously crept behind the bushes around the house, rapidly diving over to each one of them when he was in front of a window. By doing this several times, Marty managed to get to the back of the house, where he discovered a back door.

For a moment, Marty wondered what to do. Should he just get in, and risk being discovered by Driff and Biff – in which case his fate wouldn't be too great – or should he stay out here and wait, only to face Biff telling all the future's secrets to his ancestor? Marty shook his head. He couldn't do that.

Slowly, he crept towards the door, which was fortunately open, and headed inside. The door squeaked softly, but the occupants of the main room fortunately couldn't hear any of that, as they were engaged in a vicious debate.

"It can't be true!" Marty heard Driff calling out. "Certainly, you resemble me and you've got these real-looking future newspapers, but you can't really be from the future!"

"Haven't I shown you enough information then?" Biff called back. "Fine, here you got more! Look, a picture of my family! In color! And here's one of you, too!"

Marty heard Driff sighing. "This can't be happening" he muttered. "Why? Why did you come here?"

"Because I need to tell you something" Biff replied. "We need to work together on this. The Tannens cannot suffer the trouble they did in the original timeline."

Marty gasped softly. This was it! Biff was going to tell Driff about his future, and if they didn't stop this, all would be ruined. He needed to do something, now!

"What was that?" Driff said.

"What?" Biff replied.

"I heard something back there" Driff muttered.

Marty winced. He had been making too much noise, hadn't he? He looked around for a place to hide, and found a big cabinet right there. Smiling, he opened the doors and dived in. He, however, didn't notice the knob his hand was moving over until he'd already pressed it.

With some loud noise, the cabinet came to life. The floor fell away under Marty, and for a moment, the teen thought that he was headed for the centre of the earth, like in Doc's Jules Verne book. Then, he landed on a pillow of some sorts, and looked around to see the basement. It was hidden, and for a good reason too.

This basement contained all sorts of materials that would get Driff Tannen on a one-way track towards prison. There were bottles of booze, stored in crates going up to twenty or thirty of them each, and there were at least five crates. "And that's supposed to be a beginning alcohol dealer" Marty muttered. There were also a lot of guns, combined with automatic weapons. Marty was sure he even saw a grenade among them. There weren't as many exemplars of the guns as there were of the alcohol, but Marty could understand why Driff kept everything hidden.

As he was musing about all this, Marty heard footsteps above him in the hallway he'd just been in. "I don't know what it might have been" Driff was just muttering. "I doubt it'd be a burglar, though. No one robs Driff Tannen in Hill Valley. Nobody."

"Oh no?" Marty heard Biff's voice. "Then what's that supposed to be?"

Driff gasped. "Did I – I didn't leave that door open!" he exclaimed. "You're right, it must have been a burglar! That cabinet stores the secret passageway to my…"

"What?" Biff asked.

"Never mind" Driff replied. "You stay here. Better yet, go back to the living room. I'll be back in a second after I've investigated this mess. Then, we can talk some more about your future stuff."

Biff grumbled, but seemed to comply, and Marty heard Driff get into the cabinet. For a moment, he panicked, not knowing what to do. Then, his eye fell on one of the bottles. Smiling – it was true that one got the best plans when one was desperate – he took the bottle and aimed it.

Driff arrived on the ground a minute later. Though Marty had been prepared for his approach, he wasn't exactly prepared for the angle. Driff saw him first, and was enraged. "What the – what do you think you're doin' with my booze!" he exclaimed.

Marty tried to hit him, but missed, and narrowly managed to dodge a punch from Driff. "You know, I thought this was illegal!" he exclaimed.

"It is," Driff replied, "but you ain't gonna tell about it!" He ran towards his guns, but Marty was quicker. He took the heaviest gun and attacked Driff with it, slamming it on his head. He managed to hit Driff several times, significantly delaying his reaction to further kicks. Then, Marty slammed him in the face. The Tannen ancestor stared at him for a couple more seconds, then fell down in a deep slumber.

Marty smirked, and let go of the gun, throwing it back on the pile. "Well, I guess that solves that" he muttered. "Now, to get rid of Biff…"

"I don't think so, McFly."

Marty turned around. Approaching him with a smile on his face and one of Driff's guns in his hand was Biff Tannen. "Did you really think I was going to stay up there just because some silly ancestor of mine told me to?" he asked.

"Well, yeah" Marty replied.

"You were wrong" Biff unnecessarily informed him. "Raise your hands."

Marty blinked, but complied with the order. Biff got out some rope and started tying Marty to a soft bed in the corner of the underground cellar. The teen considered struggling, but the big gun Biff was holding made it clear that wasn't a great idea. He stayed calm, simply allowing Biff to tie him up. When he was done, the elderly bully sat down on a chair, smirking.

"Now," Biff said, "I'd like to know how you got here, McFly. Was it Brown who took you here? Could've sworn he and his family were on their own in twenty-sixteen, though. Or are you Marty Junior?"

"That's none of your business" Marty growled. "What are _you_ doing here, anyway? What do you think you're going to achieve?"

"Power" Biff simply replied. "Once this mess is over, I'll once again kidnap your friend and get him into the Tannen family. Perhaps I'll simply take him to another time if it would be too suspicious here after the first attempt. That's so great about that time machine Brown built, McFly – you can go anywhere you want."

"Tell me about it" Marty replied. "What do you want from Doc?"

"Not from Crackpot Brown, from you as well" Biff corrected him. "I got thinking after the last time I had one of your time machines in my possession, and I figured that I made two mistakes that time. The first was that I returned the time machine to you, enabling you to use it again and undo what I did. But the more important mistake was that I left you two around at all. I shouldn't have. You two present a threat to me that I can't simply ignore. Therefore, I conducted a plan in which I would have you two incorporated into the family, and given a chance to become Tannens and share in our power and wealth. Or at least you wouldn't be threats anymore."

"Well, it backfired" Marty said, defiantly. "Because Doc got out, and we're here right now. You can't stop us, Biff."

"Oh, can't I now?" Biff said, pushing the gun under Marty's nose. "Then let me tell me you're wrong, McFly. I've planned for this. For every eventuality." Marty couldn't help but startle at the fact that he pronounced the word right. "For the Browns noticing there had been a kidnapping and tracking down their baby – I put in a replacement. Had to go back all the way to 1996, to the day little Griff was born, to do that, but it worked."

"Griff's that other baby?" Marty said, frowning.

"That's right" Biff confirmed. "He was never anything but a brat anyway, and this would be a great chance for him to be of some use to the family. Anyway, I went back and took Griff, and the Browns never would've noticed the difference if you hadn't popped up. But you know what, McFly? I _counted_ on you two coming after me. I knew you would. I've got a back-up plan, and I'm willing to use it. And the first part is _eliminating _you… once I find out just how much you can tell me about what you and your friend have been up to."

"Then you'd better shoot right away" Marty said, bravely. "I'm not telling you anything. I've risked my own hide for Doc's life at least twice in the past few weeks, and I don't like doing it, but if that's the only way out, I'll do it. Doc's tried to save my life and was prepared to die himself – I'll do the same."

Biff smirked. "Old-style heroism, huh?" he said, putting the gun down to Marty's chest. "That's fine with me too, McFly."

He was about to pull the trigger when there was a rumor upstairs. "What the hell?" Biff muttered, walking over to the elevator. "Brown!"

"Doc?" Marty asked, hopefully.

"Don't be optimistic, McFly" Biff responded. "You still haven't got a chance." He pushed the knob of the elevator and moved up. Marty held his breath as a gunshot was heard.


	22. Chapter 21

**Disclaimer: I don't own Back to the Future. **

_Author's Note: So I got a kind review today, which inspired me to upload new chapters! I hope you'll like them. The first is a bit shorter than the average, but it resolves the cliffhanger from last chapter, so... yeah. Also, fun newspaper-change time! It looks like the story is wrapping up.  
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_**Chapter Twenty-One**_

**Wednesday, March 24, 1920  
>09:35 AM PDT<br>Hill Valley, California**

Never before in his whole adult life had Emmett Brown been a coward. Well, he'd had his moments, but he had never really thought about running away when there was another option. He didn't like the idea of being shot in the back, like the tombstone in one of the previous timelines had told him he had once been, and preferred to face his fate rather than perishing as … well, as a chicken, never mind what problems Marty might have with that that Doc preferred to avoid. No, when there was no other option but to die, Doc Brown would not go fleeing and screaming.

It was therefore an oddity that when he saw Biff Tannen coming up in the elevator holding a gun, that his first instinct was to do just that – flee, and duck in order to take cover. Lucky for him, Biff wasn't a great shot, and the ducking worked. The bullet just narrowly missed him. Doc let out a "Great Scott!" and fled out of the house. He ran out of the door and tried to dodge the bullets that were sent his way, but he knew he couldn't go on long.

Luckily, Biff was distracted for a moment, as he saw the time train there. Cursing at the fact that his prisoners had clearly escaped, he began to shoot at the machine. The bullets ricocheted on the frame of the train, which had been designed to be safe from such things (even though the goal had been easing time travel, not preparing for gunfire). This delay gave Doc a few seconds to think, and he used them.

The inventor ran around the house, with Biff resuming his chase after giving up on the train. However, Doc had gained an advantage, and when he reached the train again, he headed straight towards the elevator. Biff arrived a few seconds later, and after seeing where his adversary had gone, ran towards the elevator inside the house as well. He dove into it, and arrived at the bottom floor… where Doc was facing him, holding a gun of his own.

The shock of it made Biff drop his own gun on the floor in front of Doc, but he had the presence of mind to press the knob just before the inventor could take advantage of his own position. Biff headed up again in the elevator, and Doc felt torn on chasing after him or taking care of Marty, who was smiling at him. Eventually, he decided to go for the latter first. He wasn't that good with confronting people with weapons anyway, even if the weapons were on his side – not that Biff needed to know that.

Marty grinned broadly as Doc untied him. "I'm happy to see you showed up after all, Doc" he told his friend. "I was hoping you would, but I really didn't know whether you would get here in time."

"Well, I did, and I guess I happened to have ideal timing" Doc replied. "It looks like fortune favors us for a change. Now, let's get upstairs to see that Biff hasn't kidnapped my family again."

"You didn't lock the door?" Marty asked, as they walked up to the elevator.

"I couldn't" Doc said. "Biff has arranged it so that he has himself cleared and me no longer cleared – it would have taken me too long to resolve the situation, so I left it that way for the time being. Therefore, Clara closed the door from the inside, which means I'll have to ask her to let me in. Biff, on the other hand, can get in whenever he wants, but Clara and the boys probably won't let him get much further than the doorstep."

Marty stared at his friend. "I'm not sure what you're talking about here, Doc" he admitted.

"I was afraid of that" Doc replied, bemused. Marty not understanding his overly complex explanations… ah, that brought back memories. "Don't worry. Everything will turn out fine, I'm confident." He nodded as he stepped out of the elevator. "See? Biff's gone."

Marty nodded, and they walked over to the train. His eyes widened a bit as the door was opened. "Oh yeah, you haven't seen them yet" Doc remembered. "You know Clara, right?"

"Um, yeah" Marty said, staring at the woman who was standing in the doorway. "Though the last time I saw you, you were just dancing together at the town festival. To think you're actually _married_…" He shook his head. "I don't know what to say."

Clara frowned. "But you saw us again, didn't you?" she asked, puzzled. "In 1985. When you got back to the future."

"I'm afraid that's still in this Marty's future, Clara dear" Doc said. "I would explain, but I'm afraid it would cause your head to start hurting unless I told it really slowly, for which we don't have time right now." Clara smirked. "However, there is another issue I would like to attend to before anything else."

"Which is?" Marty asked.

"The newspaper" Doc responded as they both walked into the train, Marty looking around at the kids whom he didn't know but who vaguely knew him. "You've still got it on you, haven't you?"

Marty nodded. He pulled out the paper and looked at the picture of his other, older self, wearing a uniform. "Nothing's changed!" he exclaimed, frowning.

"Same here!" Doc said, frowning. "That's strange… wait!"

"What?" Marty asked, peeking into Doc's newspaper. Clara did the same, and even the boys approached to have a look.

"The letters are altering!" Doc whispered. "And so is the picture! Great Scott! This is the same process we've observed in 2015 and in 1955!"

And indeed it was. Where the headline had once read:

EMMETT TANNEN AWARDED  
>Local Inventor Receives Award For Human Mind Studies<p>

It now read:

EMMETT BROWN FIRED  
>Local TeacherInventor Expelled Over High School Fire

"You were fired for, uh, starting a fire?" Marty asked.

"It was an out-of-control accident" Doc said, sighing. "It got me fired from my job at Hill Valley High School back in 1953. For an aspiring inventor like me the news was a disaster as it cut away my income. Of course, when my parents died, I had the family fortune to live off, and I managed to get new occasional jobs later, but of course I would've preferred for my parents to live."

"Of course" Marty muttered. His eyes widened. "Uh, Doc? I think my newspaper's altering as well…"

"The ripple effect must have caught up to the 1990s" Doc whispered. "The picture and text are changing!" He smiled. "That's the kind of sight that will never cease to baffle me."

Where the paper had once read:

MARTIN TANNEN APPOINTED HEAD OF POLICE FORCE  
>Leader's Second Son Officially Promoted<p>

It now read:

MARTIN MCFLY APPOINTED 'ROCKER OF THE YEAR'  
>Local Musician Gets Honorary Title<p>

Doc smiled with relief, just barely noticing how Marty was staring strangely at the picture in the new version of the newspaper but dismissing it. "Well, I guess that solves the matter" he said cheerfully. "Now all we have to do is capture Biff… and make sure Driff won't remember this incident. I saw him on the floor, lying unconscious… Marty, how much information did Biff give him before he was knocked out?"

"Not much" Marty replied, trying to think hard. "Uh, I remember hearing them talk about Biff being from the future… but that's probably all he could have picked up. Immediately after that, I made that racket by going into the cellar, Driff followed me and I managed to knock him out. Then Biff showed up and tied me up, and… well, you know what happened next."

"I suppose I do" Doc replied, sighing. "Well, it is clear that Driff won't remember anything – not enough to make himself powerful – or those newspapers wouldn't have altered. Of course, we can't possibly get a view of the future by means of using two simple papers, but I have the feeling that the self-preservation effect of the space-time continuum would produce a similar paper in any timeline on an important date that would indicate just what has been altered and give a good view of the events of that world."

"Whatever you say, Doc" Marty said. "So, the other me is definitely gone now?"

Doc sighed. "He should be" he replied, thinking back of all the time he had spent with other-Marty. "A good thing we didn't take him along to 1920 – wouldn't have wanted Jules and Verne to watch his painful erasure."

Marty gulped, clearly remembering his own near-erasure from existence. "Yeah, that wouldn't have been fun" he muttered. "Not for him of course, and not for the kids either. But it does sound sad, you know. That a version of me is now gone forever."

"Marty, he wasn't you" Doc said, putting an arm around the teen's shoulder. "He was the son of Biff and your mother, so one might say that he was a completely different person who happed to have the same name, a similar appearance, and the same mother."

"Yeah, right" Marty muttered.

Doc sighed. "I don't like it either" he said. "But there was no way around it, and I suppose he might – mind you, _might_ – live on in some other world." He shook his head. "Well, no use wallowing about that now. Let's go put Driff on his bed – like with Jennifer, the disorientation should help convince him it was all a dream – and then track down Biff."

Marty stood upright. "That's right!" he called out. "Where do you think he might have gone?"

"I don't know" Doc replied. "Perhaps we will receive a hint from these newspapers, but I'm not going to wait for him to actually change history again." He shook his head. "Come on, we've got work to do."


	23. Chapter 22

**Disclaimer: I don't own Back to the Future. **

_Author's Note: Did you think it was over yet? Well, you thought wrong (dude)! As you will find out from reading this chapter, or even just from reading this author's note. And yes, I know the destination time is cliché, but... I couldn't resist. I just couldn't. Anyway, please read and review!  
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_**Chapter Twenty-Two**_

**Wednesday, March 24, 1920  
>10:00 AM PDT<br>Hill Valley, California**

Everything had failed.

Biff cursed angrily. His plan had been essentially foolproof. Had it succeeded, he would have managed to completely eliminate Brown and McFly as threats in the new timeline. They, or at least Crackpot Brown, would have been members of the Tannen family and with the information he would have given Driff he (and eventually his father, other self and son) would have been able to make sure Brown could never be in a position to threaten their regime again. And yet, he had somehow managed to escape, and now his entire plan had collapsed. He'd managed to accomplish nothing except for staying free – he had even lost his captives and his time machine.

Tannen groaned, sighing in frustration as he walked towards Hill Valley Park. How could this have happened? How could those silly descendants of his have managed to let Brown escape, and not only that, he had also built another time machine! Biff remembered that he had had some ideas on what he could do with the train, with Clara and with her boys, after ensuring the future was set on the right path. He could go to all kinds of eras, see some interesting stuff, before finally settling in the present, perhaps even in the future. But his entire plan had been thwarted and now he didn't even have a machine anymore.

Of course, he could have counted on most of that, and he had. When he first set off on this crazy journey through time he had made the vow not to let his plans be foiled by Crackpot Brown again, and he had fully intended to make true to that vow. In order to do that, he had prepared a back-up plan so that, even if everything would go wrong in 1920, he'd still have another chance to destroy Emmett Brown and Marty McFly – and preferably Emmett's wife and kids too, as they were nothing but trouble as well.

The only problem with that idea was that Biff knew he needed a time machine for it. And now that his train had been returned to Brown, the only way to get back to the future was to violently break his way into it and chase the Browns out – and Biff knew that wouldn't be easy. Yet, it was the only option, unless he could somehow find the mysterious machine Crackpot Brown had used to go back in time. Or at least, that was the assumption he was working on – Brown couldn't have just teleported, right?

Biff frowned at that thought, and looked around. This was Hill Valley Park, a central-located area in Hill Valley, yet filled with trees and bushes. If there was any place Brown would have hidden his time machine, it was here… but yet, that was all guesswork.

The old bully walked into the park, looking around carefully. If he saw anything, anything that could hint towards Brown having left his time machine here… but he had to do it soon. If the time machine was here, Brown would inevitably return to pick it up, find him, and perhaps capture him. And Biff hated to imagine what would happen to him in that case.

He tried to think as hard as he could (which was, despite the advancement of his intellect over the years, not very hard). Where could the time machine be? In a bush? Hidden behind a tree? Biff immediately discarded it. The time machine would have to be big, bigger than that. It had to be hidden on some open site of some sorts, yet at a place where people wouldn't be likely to find it…

A glint appeared in his eye as he thought of something. In this park, near the spot he was standing right now, was an open spot. It should be completely concealed from the outside world, and no one ever went there. If Brown wanted to hide his machine anywhere in this park, it would be a good idea to put it there.

Smirking, Biff walked over to the place he knew the open site to be. It wasn't easy for him to find his way there – the park had changed slightly over the years, and several times he thought he was almost there and it turned out to be just another path. But eventually, he arrived at the open spot. And as he looked around, he could see a familiar shape leaning against a tree. Ordinarily, he might have just dismissed it as a particularly odd stack of leaves. Now, he knew it was a cleverly hidden time machine.

Well, it obviously wasn't that clever, or else he wouldn't have been able to find it. Biff walked over to the machine, and took off the leaves. It was a DeLorean, he soon found – probably the same machine he had stolen on that October day. Good for him. He knew how to operate that car. He walked over to the driver's seat, and tried to open it. However, he was met with an angry beep and a red flash as soon as he touched the door handle.

Instead of frowning, Biff smiled. He had spent so much time on the possibility of stealing a DeLorean that he'd been caught off-guard for a second when it was revealed that Brown had a time travelling train. But he had eventually made his way in there, and he still knew how to break into this DeLorean. All he would have to do was take a branch and slam it as hard as he could to where he knew the weakest spot of any touch-based car lock system to be, and the door would open.

His plan gave him a sense of optimism for a few seconds, but it dissolved when he heard Marty McFly's voice in the distance. He looked up, and detected people coming this way through the bushes on the opposite side of the open spot. For a moment, he began to panic. They couldn't get him now! Not when he was so close to victory!

Desperate, he slammed the nearest branch against the lock, as hard as he could. For a moment, it looked like it didn't work, as the automatic security system was setting in, signaled by an orange flash which indicated that a message was being sent to the police right now. Of course, that didn't matter, since the police would not have technology to receive it for another eighty-plus years. However, before Biff could even finish speculating about that issue, the lock gave way and the door opened. The bully smiled and was about to climb into the driver's seat when he saw Crackpot Brown emerge on the other side.

Brown saw him the moment thereafter. "Biff Tannen!" he exclaimed, gasping.

"Emmett Brown" Biff growled. "Don't even think you can stop me now, butthead." He rapidly climbed into the driver's seat, shut the door, and turned the flying circuits on.

Crackpot Brown started running towards him, but it was naturally useless. The time machine was far out of his reach by now. Biff smiled, and flew the DeLorean up into the sky, being watched by helpless colleague time travelers. They would catch up to him again somehow, but until then, he had a chance to prepare his trap. And this time, they would be caught in it.

oooooooo

Emmett Brown stared with a growing feeling of helplessness as the DeLorean shot through the sky. He watched as it accelerated up to eighty-eight and vanished through time with a brilliant flash of light.

"Next time, I'm going to the twenty-thirties at least to get my thumb-locks from" he muttered, sighing.

"Doc, what's happening?" Marty asked, concerned. "Where do you think Biff went?"

Doc sighed again. "I don't know" he said. "He can't be going to the past, unless he changed very little (which I doubt), because we're not noticing anything. So that means one of two things – either he's setting some sort of trap to us by going back in time anyway and not doing anything, or he's headed for the future and…" He blinked. "Hmm… that's odd."

"What's the matter, Emmett?" Clara asked.

"There's something in my pocket that is buzzing frequently" Doc told her, taking a small device out of his pocket and staring at it. "Ah, of course! The time tracker I installed in the DeLorean! It should be able to tell us where Biff went."

"You installed a… what now in the DeLorean?" Marty asked.

"Not a what now, a time tracker" Doc replied. "It tracks down a time machine in time and sends the Destination Time to the tracker itself. I built it in the future after concerns another Biff-incident might happen… I had no idea it would come in handy this early."

"Where did Biff go, Dad?" Verne asked. The poor boy was shaking, and Doc couldn't blame him. If you were just six years old and you'd just found out the bad man that had captured you was getting away… through time, no less… he sighed and looked at the tracker, squinting to read the numbers in the fierce rays of the spring sun.

"Eleven…" he read. "Twelve… nineteen…fifty-five." He gasped, realizing what it meant. "Great Scott!"

"This is heavy!" Marty agreed. "November 12th, 1955? Really?"

"Indeed – at 8:00 PM" Doc replied. "I don't know what Biff's up to, but I do know it could potentially endanger us greatly. That was the night I got sent back to the Old West, and if that is prevented, Clara and the boys will fade out. And if your parents don't get together, _you_'ll fade out. Not to mention what will happen if young Biff keeps that almanac."

"I've got the idea, Doc – we have to stop him at all costs" Marty said. "Any idea on how? Last time, there were two of us, but now there'll be _three_. That's gonna be difficult, to say the least."

"I know that, Marty" Doc replied, sighing. "I just wish there was a way around it. But we can't go to any date _but _November 12th to stop Biff, and while we might be able to travel to, say, December 1955 to obtain evidence about what Biff did, it is possible that we might all erase upon arrival. We have no idea what Biff might seek to accomplish in the 1950s, and I'm not sure I really want to find out."

Marty and Clara shook her heads, gulping. "And I thought _Buford_ was bad" Clara whispered.

"He was, but Biff can be just as evil or worse some times, as this trip proves" Doc said. "And he's slightly smarter too, which makes him more dangerous." He sighed. "We'll have to plan extensively for this before our departure, and try to do the best we can afterwards. However, first we have one final matter to take care of here in 1920."

Marty nodded. "Griff Tannen."

Doc frowned. "No, I meant the baby Biff had placed in the hospital in my younger self's place. It's vitally important that he is returned to his place of origin. Or did you mean to say that you thought it was Griff?"

Marty shook his head. "I don't think it – I know. Biff told me when he had me as a captive. He also said he had taken Griff from the very day he was born."

Doc smiled broadly. "Now that gives us some clues" he said. "It means that we know exactly where to return him. I'm not sure when Griff was born, besides that it was in 1996, but we can always look it up in future newspapers – _after_ all this is sorted out."

Clara frowned. "Do you really think we ought to return him, Emmett?" she asked. "If he's left there to continue the Tannen line…" She shivered. "I'm not sure what else we can do to him, but I don't want a time machine theft like this to happen again. The thought of it is making me nervous, and I can't begin to imagine what it's doing to poor Jules and Verne."

"We'll be fine, mother – Mom" Jules said, though from his tone of voice one could see that he was talking tougher than he really was. "Don't worry. I might sleep badly tonight, but considering the fact that we've been up for quite a while already, I don't think that will be too much of a problem. We'll get over it, I'm sure."

"Don't underestimate problems like this, kid" Marty said. "I've been through hell the past few weeks, and it's certainly been keeping me up at night. Your Dad getting shot at Twin Pines, er, _Lone _Pine Mall, and my Dad dying in Biff's first alternate reality…" He shuddered. "By the way, you did a great job at recreating that first experiment, Doc. I have double memories of the silliest things, but the memories I've got of that night barely contrast at all."

"Barely?" Doc replied, smiling.

"Well, there are _some _differences" Marty said. "A little bit of different conversation here, a few minor different actions there. No big deal, and it all ended the way it…" He shuddered again, before forcing himself to say the words: "…the way it should have."

Doc sighed. "Marty, I'm sorry for putting you through all that" he said, softly. "Had I known about what would happen in the old timeline, I probably never would have made that silly deal with Libyan terrorists." He sighed. "But I didn't, and I made the deal, and after you got back in time I had to make it again. There was no other option."

Marty nodded. "Then I guess I'm sorry about it, too" he muttered. "For putting _you _through it." He held up his hand, forestalling any protest from Doc that there was no need for him to feel guilty. "It's all in the past – er, future now. Let's get Griff and then go to 1955."

"We should" Doc said. "Although I'm not sure whether Clara and the boys would want to come along."

"Don't speak about me as if I'm not here, Emmett" Clara said. "Why wouldn't I want to come along?"

"Because whatever happens will shock you for sure" Doc replied. "It will take Marty and me a lot of work to fix history. Yet, we can't really _not _bring you along. To leave you in 1920 is no good option…"

"Then let us go with you" Clara said, firmly. "Don't argue with me, Emmett. I know you mean well, but I can stand up for myself. Even if you would return us to 1895, it would just leave us sick with worry if you never returned – not that I expect you to fail, but I'd like to be there and help you in whatever way I can. Also, I've always wanted to see the date that you and Marty went to twice and on which you had so many adventures."

Doc frowned. "I must warn you, my dear, it won't be a pleasure trip" he said. "Biff Tannen is a dangerous character, and we'll have to stay out of the way of our other selves. The less people, the less…"

"…of a burden?" Clara finished. "I'm not a burden, dear. I want to come, and surely you agree that I can't leave my sons alone."

Doc sighed, and nodded. "All right" he muttered. "I guess that's settled, then. Marty, can you go over to fetch Griff for me? We'll meet you back at the train – it'll give me the chance to reset those pesky access locks Biff installed on it."

"But why can't you… right, because they're your parents" Marty said, answering his own question. "I've seen the resemblance with your father, Doc – it's not as extreme as it could have been given the pre… the precedent of me and my future son, but they'd still give you a strange look."

"Exactly" Doc said. "And that's one thing we don't need right now. Good luck."

He sighed as Marty ran off, and smiled warily. Maybe, just maybe, they would be able to fix this problem in 1955 and end this whole adventure for once and for all.


End file.
